tokenistic
tokenistic adjective: serving as a token of support, compliance, etc., but lacking substance; exhibiting or relating to tokenism.
Adjective
tokenistic (comparative more tokenistic, superlative most tokenistic)
- Serving as a token of support, compliance, etc., but lacking substance; exhibiting or relating to tokenism.
- The government has taken nothing more than tokenistic actions on behalf of people with disabilities.
- The company’s use of ads depicting gay couples appears to be merely tokenistic, particularly in view of the support it has given to anti-LGBT politicians.
- Constituting a token or symbol.
- Animals are tokens. Among tokenistic animals the dragon holds the first place. The dragon of the sky is indissolubly linked in the minds of the masses with the emperor who sits on the dragon throne, and who, after death, ascends upon the dragon “to be a guest on high.”1908, T. W. Pearce, “The Ancient Faiths of the Chinese” in Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China, London: Lloyd’s Greater Britain...
- Synonyms:
- symbolic
Examples of tokenistic in a sentence
- But what is not needed is a tokenistic gesture to place a woman, any woman, in the role, irrespective of her politics.2014 April 14, Lola Okolosie, “We need a women's minister with clout, not another tokenistic exercise”, in The Guardian:
- And it's not the word “black” either,’ says Sarah's partner, Ross. ‘It's that it's tokenistic to say “invite your black friends”.’2017, Jamie Bartlett, chapter 6, in Radicals, William Heinemann, →ISBN:
- As Jonathan Bartley said in The Independent on January 20, it makes Johnson's £12bn ten-point plan look "tokenistic by comparison".2021 January 27, Stefanie Foster, quoting Jonathan Bartley, “Comment: Rail crucial to green success”, in RAIL, issue 923, page 3:
Synonyms of tokenistic
Forms of tokenistic
| comparative | more tokenistic |
|---|---|
| superlative | most tokenistic |
Origin of tokenistic
From token + -istic.
Words formed from tokenistic
Questions about tokenistic
- What does tokenistic mean?
- Tokenistic means serving as a token of support, compliance, etc., but lacking substance; exhibiting or relating to tokenism.
- How do you use tokenistic in a sentence?
- But what is not needed is a tokenistic gesture to place a woman, any woman, in the role, irrespective of her politics.
- What part of speech is tokenistic?
- Tokenistic is an adjective.
Words near tokenistic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tokenistic (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: “tokenistic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tokenistic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.