Word.ws English Dictionary

non-native

UK/nɒnˈneɪtɪv/

non-native adjective: not native; not indigenous to a particular area; foreign; invasive.

Adjective

non-native (not comparable)

  1. Not native; not indigenous to a particular area; foreign; invasive.
    • Use purple three-awn grass to replace the overused, invasive non-native weedy Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima).2016, Greg Rubin, Lucy Warren, The Drought-Defying California Garden, Portland: Timber Press, published 2021, →ISBN, page 135
    • The economy is at full employment and the state is flush with tax revenue but their social media feeds depict a country overrun with “non-native” predators such as Jozef Puska, a Slovak man convicted earlier this month of murdering a teacher, Ashling Murphy, in 2022.2023 November 24, Rory Carroll, “‘Government is not listening’: anger over immigration spills into riot on Dublin’s streets”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Noun

non-native (plural non-natives)

  1. A person who is not native.

Forms of non-native

Adjective
alternative formnonnative
Noun
pluralnon-natives

Origin of non-native

From non- + native.

Words formed from non-native

Phrases with non-native

Words that rhyme with non-native

18 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about non-native

What does non-native mean?
Non-native means not native; not indigenous to a particular area; foreign; invasive.
What part of speech is non-native?
Non-native can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce non-native?
Non-native is pronounced /nɒnˈneɪtɪv/ (UK).

Words near non-native in the dictionary

  1. non-names
  2. non-nano
  3. non-narrative
  4. non-national
  5. non-nationals
  6. non-native
  7. non-native speaker
  8. non-native speakers
  9. non-native species
  10. non-native-speaker
  11. non-natives

Source and license

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