ETHNIC • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Ethnic

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/ˈɛθnɪk/ Listen

adjective

Ethnical, Ethnic adj.

1.

Belonging to races or nations; based on distinctions of race; ethnological.

2.

Pertaining to the gentiles, or nations not converted to Christianity; heathen; pagan; opposed to Jewish and Christian.

3.

Of or pertaining to a group having a distinct racial, cultural, religious or linguistic character; as, ethnic differences within a population can cause civil war.

4.

Being a member of a distinct racial or cultural minority within a larger population; as, ethnic Chinese own most of the businesses in Indonesia.

noun

Ethnic n.

1.

A heathen; a pagan. (Obs.) "No better reported than impure ethnic and lay dogs."

2.

A member of an ethnic group.

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Etymology of 'Ethnic'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ethnic" Quotes from Famous Books

... for melody among the worshippers of the "Light of Asia." The hum of pagoda litanies, and the shouts and gongs of idol processions are not psalms. But many historic faiths have lost their melody, and we must go far back in the annals of ethnic life to find ...

— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... your calm judgments, if anything has been added to our declaration of rights, those declarations founded upon the constitution of nature. These men voiced the brotherhood of the race. All other declarations prior to this were but for dynasties, or were ethnic at most. But those men swept the horizon of humanity. These men called forth, as it were, the oncoming centuries of time, and in their presence declared that all men are created ...

— 'America for Americans!' - The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon • John Philip Newman

... the majority of the people are Mohammedan, have no tribal organisation, and call themselves Malays (Orang Malayu). This name has usually been accorded them by European authors; but when so used the name denotes a social, political, and religious status rather than membership in an ethnic group. With the exception of these partially civilised "Malays" of the coast regions and the imported elements mentioned above, all the natives of Borneo live under tribal organisation, their cultures ranging from the extreme simplicity of the nomadic Punans ...

— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... of fanaticism, the modern Egyptians, or rather the inhabitants of Alexandria, seem hardly to have degenerated from their ethnic "forbears" as we read in Mr. J. A. St. John's travels the account of a serious insurrection which broke out some years ago in that city, in consequence of certain Jews having taken up the butchers' trade, and having slain the meat with a knife having three instead ...

— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... the theorists, the men of spurious knowledge, will in vain have heaped up their farrago of quibbles and arguments, their fallacies drawn from so-called precedents or from so-called economic and ethnic necessity; for the simple, brutal and magnificent cry of life renders useless the efforts they make to galvanize and erect doctrines which cannot stand alone. The disapproval which attaches in our time to the word "internationalism" ...

— Light • Henri Barbusse

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