ethnic cleansing
ethnic cleansing noun: the mass expulsion or killing of people belonging to one ethnic group by those of another.
Noun
ethnic cleansing (uncountable)
- The mass expulsion or killing of people belonging to one ethnic group by those of another.
- These television stations are part of the apparatus and power of Milosevic. This is the apparatus he has used to do the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.1999 April 24, Martin Kettle, Alex Brummer, quoting Tony Blair, “The bombing goes on”, in The Guardian
- That’s not because imperialism cares about the fate of Palestine, to which it’s entirely indifferent, but because Israeli aggression and ethnic cleansing, to say nothing of genocide, is a permanent cause of explosive popular anger in the region and increasingly, internationally.2026 May, David Finkel, “Middle East War Expands: A Spreading Global Disaster”, in Against the Current, volume 41, number 2, via EBSCOhost, →ISSN, page 6
- Synonyms:
- ethnic purge
ethnic cleansing meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Arabic
ethnic cleansing in Hindi
- ethnic cleansing
- जातीय संहार jātīya sãhār
ethnic cleansing in Tamil
- இன ஒழிப்பு
ethnic cleansing in Urdu
- ethnic cleansing
- نسلی صفایا naslī-safāyā, نسلی تطہیر naslī-tathīr
ethnic cleansing in Arabic
- ethnic cleansing
- تَطْهِير عِرْقِيّ taṭhīr ʕirqiyy
More languagesFewer languages
- ethnic cleansing in Malay
- pembersihan etnik
- ethnic cleansing in Persian
- پاکسازی قومی pâk-sâzi-ye qowmi
- ethnic cleansing in Vietnamese
- thanh lọc sắc tộc
Synonyms of ethnic cleansing
Origin of ethnic cleansing
Possibly a calque of Serbo-Croatian etničko čišćenje, though this is probably attested later. Popularized by (and still often associated with) the wars in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s; however, versions of the phrase have been attested since the 1860s in various languages (with the earliest attestation translating directly to the phrase being Romanian purificare etnică from 1941) and it probably arose independently on numerous occasions.
Words formed from ethnic cleansing
Questions about ethnic cleansing
- What does ethnic cleansing mean?
- Ethnic cleansing means the mass expulsion or killing of people belonging to one ethnic group by those of another.
- What is ethnic cleansing in Hindi?
- Ethnic cleansing in Hindi is जातीय संहार (jātīya sãhār). See Ethnic cleansing meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is ethnic cleansing?
- Ethnic cleansing is a noun.
Words near ethnic cleansing in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ethnic cleansing (page history and authors); ethnic cleansing (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-ethnic cleansing.wav.
Cite this entry: “ethnic cleansing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ethnic_cleansing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.