Wiktionary

indigenous

See also: Indigenous

English

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WOTD – 4 October 2010

Etymology

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Borrowed from Late Latin indigenus (“native, born in a country”), from indi- (indu-), an old derivative of in (“in”), gen- the root of gignō (“give birth to”), and English -ous. Compare indigene, Ancient Greek ἐνδογενής (endogenḗs, “born in the house”), and the separately formed piecewise doublet endogenous. Unrelated to Indian.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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indigenous (not comparable)

  1. Born or originating in, native to a land or region, especially before an intrusion. [from 17th c.]
    • 1862, Henry David Thoreau, Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree:
      Not only the Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores.
    • 1997, Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, Monthly Review Press, page 17:
      Horses, like camels, had once been indigenous to Latin America but had become extinct.
    • 2015, Esra Özyürek, Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe, Princeton University Press, page 23:
      Berlin is unique in being home to numerous East German converts to Islam who belong to the same German-speaking Muslim communities as West German converts. […] I attempt in this book to give a good sense of the diversity of contemporary indigenous Sunni Muslims in Germany, while pointing to commonalities and differences.
    1. In particular, of or relating to a people (or their language or culture) that inhabited a region prior to the arrival of people of other cultures which became dominant (e.g., through colonialism), and which maintains a distinct culture.
      The Ainu are the indigenous ethnic group of Japan's Hokkaido Island.
      • 2007 April, Julie Grundvig, “TAIWAN”, in The Asia Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the Continent‎[2], →ISBN, →OCLC, page 103, column 2:
        About 98 per cent of Taiwan's inhabitants are Han Chinese, a diverse mix of ethnic and linguistic groups, including Hakka, Cantonese and Fujianese, who came from China's southern coast. Taiwan's other two per cent are from one of the nine indigenous tribes, which are scattered throughout the island but largely concentrated along the east coast and in the Central Mountain Range.
  2. Innate, inborn. [from 19th c.]

Usage notes

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  • Some style guides recommend capitalizing Indigenous in reference to the racial/ethnic/cultural category,[1][2][3] while noting that lowercase indigenous has historically been more common.[4]
  • The word is capitalised when it appears as part of the proper name of a recognized ethnic category. For example, "Indigenous Australian" and "Indigenous Canadian" are always capitalised.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

See also

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References

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  1. ^ “FAQ 0106”, in The Chicago Manual of Style FAQ‎[1], 2023 March 2 (last accessed), archived from the original on 2 March 2023, Capitalization
  2. ^ AP
  3. ^ APA
  4. ^ Google Ngrams for "(Ii)ndigenous man, (Ii)ndigenous woman," 1908–2008

Further reading

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