Word.ws English Dictionary

politically correct

politically correct adjective: possessing or conforming to the correct political positions; following the official policies of a government or political party.

Adjective

politically correct (comparative more politically correct, superlative most politically correct)

  1. Possessing or conforming to the correct political positions; following the official policies of a government or political party.
    • Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? ‘The United States’, instead of the ‘People of the United States’, is the toast given. This is not politically correct.1793, U.S. Supreme Court, Chisholm v State of GA, 2 US 419 (1793)
    • [On] the one hand we should demand that the poet's work conform to the correct political tendency, on the other hand we have the right to expect that his work be of high quality. … I want to show you that the political tendency of a work can only be politically correct if it is also literarily...1934/1970, Walter Benjamin, "The Author as Producer" (address at the Institute for the Study of Fascism, Paris, April 27, 1934), as translated by John Heckman for New Left Review 1/62, July-August...
    Synonyms:
    dogmatic, orthodox
  2. (derogatory, idiomatic, sometimes) Sensitive to giving offense on the grounds of race, sex, etc.
    • A man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinist too.1970, Toni Cade, The Black Woman
    • Why do they call camels "Ships-of-the-desert" ?
      [...]
      Because they're full of Iranian seamen.
      (NOW, being politically correct you must, of course, substitute "martian"
      What a clever joke this becomes! Hopefully, there are no martians listening. )1981 December 14, G:kirk, “Yet Another Camel Joke”, in net.jokes (Usenet), message-ID <anews.Apopuli.106>
  3. (derogatory, idiomatic) Stereotypically left-wing; possessing or conforming to stereotypical left-wing social views.
    • Don Imus, Bernard McGuirk, Trent Lott, Larry Summers, the Duke lacrosse team, Jimmy the Greek, the kid who yelled "water buffalo" at Penn, Howard Cosell, Jon Stewart, Chief Illiniwek, Jackie Mason and "South Park" all have in common only one thing: They have not been Politically Correct.2007 May 3, Daniel Henninger, “After Imus: End the Executions”, in Wall Street Journal
    • From foie gras produced without making birds suffer to "sustainable" fish, British retailers and restaurants are fast embracing politically correct food, helped by celebrity-fuelled pressure.2010, “Politically correct food on the menu in Britain”, in The Independent
    Synonyms:
    right-on

Verb

politically correct (third-person singular simple present politically corrects, present participle politically correcting, simple past and past participle politically corrected)

  1. (transitive) To modify in a way that is considered more respectful to minorities.
    • There is nothing new or progressive in the politically corrected vocabularies that now amuse the prejudiced.1998, Humphrey McQueen, Temper Democratic: How Exceptional is Australia?, Wakefield Press, →ISBN, page 190
    • Thus, although Pastoral Paul contradicts, updates, and politically corrects Paul of the authentic letters in accordance with the horizontalized, non-sectarian interest of the Pastorals, he does this as an extension of a decidedly this-worldly, conservative paraenesis which may be seen as Paul's own...2005, Lone Fatum, “Christ Domesticated”, in Jostein Ådna, editor, The Formation of the Early Church, Mohr Siebeck, →ISBN, page 196
  2. (transitive) To modify in a way that conforms more to the official position of a government or political party.
    • Even a senior Chinese scholar-official who had been politically correcting my arguments and opinions throughout the conference smiled and accepted that the academic standards to which we both had to comply were quite different—I would be ridiculed by my own colleagues were I to adopt the standards...2013, Andrew Martin Fischer, “Preface”, in The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page xxxiv

Examples of politically correct in a sentence

  • I am here to tell you that we are going to do those things which need to be done, not because they are politically correct, but because they are right.1964 March 23, Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks in Atlantic City at the Convention of the United Auto Workers:
  • It was politically correct also from the standpoint of the need to overthrow the three reactionary monarchies of Europe—that of Russia, of Germany and of Austria-Hungary.1969, Y. F. Sopin, chapter 5, in The Bolshevik Party's Struggle Against Trotskyism, page 214:
  • They argue that continued use of the term "artificial" is institutionalized racism on the part of organic life, the term "synthetic" is considered the politically correct alternative.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Computers: Artificial Intelligence...
  • It appears that in trying to solve one problem - bias - the tech giant has created another: output which tries so hard to be politically correct that it ends up being absurd.2024, Zoe Kleinman (technology editor), "Why Google's 'woke' AI problem won't be an easy fix"...

Synonyms of politically correct

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of politically correct

Forms of politically correct

Adjective
comparativemore politically correct
superlativemost politically correct
alternative formPC
alternative formP.C.
Verb
third-person singular presentpolitically corrects
present participlepolitically correcting
past participlepolitically corrected
pastpolitically corrected

Origin of politically correct

The earliest known attestation occurs in the United States in the late 18th century, in response to a toast made to the United States instead of to the people of the United States. In the early twentieth century the term was associated with the dogmatic application of Stalinist and Communist Party doctrine, and later popularized by Mao Zedong in his essay Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?(1963) which equated “correct” with “the disciplined acceptance of a party line”. In the 1970s it was adopted by wider left-wing politics. The first known use in this sense was by Toni Cade in her anthology The Black Woman (1970). It was subsequently used in a statement by Karen DeCrow in December 1975 in her capacity as president of the National Organization for Women. In the 1980s it acquired the pejorative sense when used to mock conformist liberal academics, their stereotypical political views and alleged attempts to control language.

Words formed from politically correct

Questions about politically correct

What does politically correct mean?
Politically correct means possessing or conforming to the correct political positions; following the official policies of a government or political party.
How do you use politically correct in a sentence?
I am here to tell you that we are going to do those things which need to be done, not because they are politically correct, but because they are right.
What part of speech is politically correct?
Politically correct can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near politically correct in the dictionary

  1. politicalizers
  2. politicalizes
  3. politicalizing
  4. politicall
  5. politically
  6. politically correct
  7. politically corrected
  8. politically correcting
  9. politically correctly
  10. politically correctness
  11. politically corrects

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: politically correct (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-politically correct.ogg.

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