Word.ws English Dictionary

ethnographic present

ethnographic present noun: the present tense formerly used in ethnographies, even for cultures that no longer existed by the time they were written.

Noun

ethnographic present (countable and uncountable, plural ethnographic presents)

  1. The present tense formerly used in ethnographies, even for cultures that no longer existed by the time they were written.
    • When he said they hunt buffalo, he was using the ethnographic present- there are no buffalo on the reservation.

Forms of ethnographic present

pluralethnographic presents

Questions about ethnographic present

What does ethnographic present mean?
Ethnographic present means the present tense formerly used in ethnographies, even for cultures that no longer existed by the time they were written.
What part of speech is ethnographic present?
Ethnographic present is a noun.
What is the plural of ethnographic present?
The plural of ethnographic present is ethnographic presents.

Words near ethnographic present in the dictionary

  1. ethnogogues
  2. ethnogrammar
  3. ethnographer
  4. ethnographers
  5. ethnographic
  6. ethnographic present
  7. ethnographic presents
  8. ethnographical
  9. ethnographically
  10. ethnographies
  11. ethnographist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ethnographic present (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: “ethnographic present.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ethnographic_present. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.