Word.ws English Dictionary

microaggress

microaggress verb: to perform one or more acts of microaggression.

Verb

microaggress (third-person singular simple present microaggresses, present participle microaggressing, simple past and past participle microaggressed)

  1. (intransitive) To perform one or more acts of microaggression.
    • Every chapter presents an integrated "way forward" section that provides practical steps that we ourselves can take in order to better understand and control our own tendency to microaggress.2010, Derald Wing Sue, Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation, →ISBN, Forward
    • Heterosexuals may also deny that they themselves could ever be heterosexist, stating such claims as, "I'm not homophobic, I have a gay friend." . . . [I]t sends a message to the individual that she cannot confront this person when he or she microaggresses.2011, Kevin L. Nadal et al., "Gender, Racial, and Sexual Orientation Microagressions" in Women as Transformational Leaders (Michele A. Paludi and Breena E. Coates, eds.), p. 15 (Google preview)
  2. (transitive) To perform one or more acts of microaggression directed at (someone).
    • You are microaggressing me and it is not okay. Period. End of story.2011 April 12, Nellie, "I Wear Heels, Stop Judging Me," ourwiredlives.com (retrieved 23 Feb 2014)
    • People who are minorities because of physical characteristics such as gender, skin color or age are more often subjected to microaggressions, but most of us have been microaggressed at some point.2012, Ranna Parekh MD, Carl C. Bell MD, with Karen Weintraub, Overcoming Prejudice at Work (e-book), harvardhealthbooks.org ch. 1 (Google view)

Examples of microaggress in a sentence

  • Even people of colour microaggress all the time,” she said.2014 February 18, Graeme Hamilton, “McGill student forced to apologize for racial ‘microaggression’ after emailing joke Obama clip”, in...
  • A common example of microaggressing people with disabilities is to assume an individual with a physical disability needs someone else to do a task for them.2013, Karen A. Myers et al., Allies for Inclusion: Disability and Equity in Higher Education, →ISBN, page 62:

Forms of microaggress

third-person singular presentmicroaggresses
present participlemicroaggressing
past participlemicroaggressed
pastmicroaggressed
alternative formmicro-aggress

Origin of microaggress

From micro- + aggress, as a back-formation from microaggression.

Questions about microaggress

What does microaggress mean?
Microaggress means to perform one or more acts of microaggression.
How do you use microaggress in a sentence?
Even people of colour microaggress all the time,” she said.
What part of speech is microaggress?
Microaggress is a verb.
What is the past tense of microaggress?
The past tense of microaggress is microaggressed.

Words near microaggress in the dictionary

  1. microagglutinations
  2. microaggregate
  3. microaggregates
  4. microaggregation
  5. microaggregations
  6. microaggress
  7. microaggressed
  8. microaggressee
  9. microaggressees
  10. microaggresses
  11. microaggressing

Source and license

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