Word.ws English Dictionary

colonialisms

colonialisms is the plural of colonialism.

Meaning of colonialism

Noun

colonialism (countable and uncountable, plural colonialisms)

  1. The seizure of geographical area to extract its natural resources or exploit the labor of the indigenous peoples to remotely benefit a distant country.
    • Though most of the cases here cover European encounters with non-Europeans, it is not the intention of the book to give the impression that genocide is a function of European colonialism and imperialism alone.2008 June 1, A. Dirk Moses, “Preface”, in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, Berghahn Books, →ISBN, page x
  2. (colloquial, derogatory, often) The subjugation of a weaker country, population, or people by a dominant country, population, or people.
    • It was the racist, settler colonialism that created whiteness, that created blackness, half-caste, quarter-caste, octoroon, that saw mixed-race people as a third race.2021 November 7, Claire [G.] Coleman, “Not quite blak enough: ‘The people who think I am too white to be Aboriginal are all white’”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2021
  3. (broadly, derogatory) Any form of foreign influence seen as undesirable.
  4. A colonial word, phrase, concept, or habit.
    • Although the settlement seems so far to have made but slow progress, there are many things which show that, to use a colonialism, "the place was going ahead."1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 239
  5. Colonial life.

Questions about colonialisms

What is colonialisms the plural of?
Colonialisms is the plural of colonialism.

Words near colonialisms in the dictionary

  1. colonialise
  2. colonialised
  3. colonialises
  4. colonialising
  5. colonialism
  6. colonialisms
  7. colonialist
  8. colonialistic
  9. colonialistically
  10. colonialists
  11. colonialities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: colonialisms (page history and authors); colonialism (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: “colonialisms.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/colonialisms. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.