Word.ws English Dictionary

affirmative actions

affirmative actions is the plural of affirmative action.

Meaning of affirmative action

Noun

affirmative action (usually uncountable, plural affirmative actions)

  1. (usually) A set of policies or programs providing advantages for people of a group who are seen to have traditionally been the target of discrimination.
    • Several proponents of affirmative action who were interviewed cited the scandal to dismiss the notion, advanced by some opponents of the policy, that America has moved beyond racial discrimination.1996 November 10, Sam Howe Verhovek, “Vote in California is Motivating Foes of Anti-Bias Plans”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
  2. (countable, usually) A specific policy with such a goal.
    • The debate on specific affirmative actions has similarly been reduced to mean quotas and preferential treatment of minorities and white women at the expense of white males.1995, Gene A. Lew, Perspectives on Affirmative Action and Its Impact on Asian Pacific Americans

Questions about affirmative actions

What is affirmative actions the plural of?
Affirmative actions is the plural of affirmative action.

Words near affirmative actions in the dictionary

  1. affirmational
  2. affirmationally
  3. affirmations
  4. affirmative
  5. affirmative action
  6. affirmative actions
  7. affirmative defense
  8. affirmative defenses
  9. affirmative pregnant
  10. affirmative resolution
  11. affirmative sentence

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: affirmative actions (page history and authors); affirmative action (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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