Word.ws English Dictionary

check your privilege

check your privilege phrase: used to urge someone to examine their own speech and actions for bias or presumption due to social privilege and to curb or check any such bias or presumption.

Phrase

check your privilege

  1. Used to urge someone to examine their own speech and actions for bias or presumption due to social privilege and to curb or check any such bias or presumption.
    • The idea that the dominant lack the tools to recognize their role in systems of oppression is currently in the cultural ascendant. It underpins the instruction to ‘check your privilege’.2017, Clare Chambers, “Ideology and Normativity”, in Aristotelian Society, →DOI
    • Although many privileged groups may recognize the disadvantage of another group, for instance the underrepresentation of individuals from working-class backgrounds in elite occupations such as law and banking, they may not recognize or accept their own “over-privilege.” The objective of such...2017, “Integrating Talent and Diversity Management”, in The Oxford Handbook of Talent Management, Oxford University Press, →DOI

Questions about check your privilege

What does check your privilege mean?
Check your privilege means used to urge someone to examine their own speech and actions for bias or presumption due to social privilege and to curb or check any such bias or presumption.
What part of speech is check your privilege?
Check your privilege is a phrase.

Words near check your privilege in the dictionary

  1. check viewers
  2. check washing
  3. check weigher
  4. check weighers
  5. check you out
  6. check your privilege
  7. check yourself before you wreck yourself
  8. check-call
  9. check-called
  10. check-calling
  11. check-calls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: check your privilege (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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Cite this entry: “check your privilege.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/check_your_privilege. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.