Word.ws English Dictionary

auto-ethnocide

auto-ethnocide noun: the destruction of an ethnic culture by its own members.

Noun

auto-ethnocide (uncountable)

  1. (rare) The destruction of an ethnic culture by its own members.
    • Of all the ethnic groups, castes are the only ones which, if given an opportunity, would commit “auto-ethnocide,” that is, which would gladly shed their separate identity and join the main body of the society whose culture they share.1981 May 22, Pierre L. van den Berghe, The Ethnic Phenomenon, page 163-164 (paperback 1987), Elsevier Social Science
    • In what amounted to an act of autoethnocide (which of course is why it has attracted so much anthropological attention), gods, chiefs, and men were desacralized, and men and women (as well as chiefs and commoners) were defined as equal within the framework of a disenchanted world.1989-1990 winter, Sherry B. Ortner, “Gender Hegemonies”, Cultural Critique: The Construction of Gender and Modes of Social Division II, number 14, pages 35-80

Origin of auto-ethnocide

From auto- + ethnocide.

Questions about auto-ethnocide

What does auto-ethnocide mean?
Auto-ethnocide means the destruction of an ethnic culture by its own members.
What part of speech is auto-ethnocide?
Auto-ethnocide is a noun.

Words near auto-ethnocide in the dictionary

  1. auto-decrement
  2. auto-directional
  3. auto-education
  4. auto-emasculation
  5. auto-encoder
  6. auto-ethnocide
  7. auto-fellatio
  8. auto-forwarding
  9. auto-generated
  10. auto-genocide
  11. auto-immune

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: auto-ethnocide (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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