Meaning & use
ethnic group
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Meaning
nouncountable
A community of people who share a common ancestry, culture, language or traditions and who see themselves, or are seen by others, as distinct.
Grammar: Counted like any noun: one ethnic group, several ethnic groups.
Patterns
- an ethnic group in somewhere
- members of an ethnic group
The country is home to more than forty different ethnic groups.
She belongs to an ethnic group that has its own language and festivals.
The survey asked people to choose the ethnic group they identify with.
Word forms
| plural | ethnic groups |
|---|
Common combinations
- a major ethnic group
- The Han are the major ethnic group in China.
- a minority ethnic group
- Schools in the region teach the languages of each minority ethnic group.
- belong to an ethnic group
- Many residents belong to the same ethnic group as their neighbors.
- members of an ethnic group
- Members of the ethnic group gathered for their annual celebration.
- conflict between ethnic groups
- Aid workers tried to reduce conflict between ethnic groups.
Synonyms and how they differ
- people
- As in 'the Navajo people', it names a community more informally and carries less of a social-science tone than ethnic group.
- nationality
- Nationality is about legal citizenship of a state, whereas an ethnic group is about shared descent and culture, which can cross borders.
- race
- Race refers to supposed physical categories and is a more contested term, while ethnic group stresses culture and shared heritage.
- community
- Community is broader and can mean any group living together or sharing an interest, not only people of common descent.
Word family
- ethnic adjective
- relating to a shared cultural or ancestral background
- ethnicity noun
- the fact of belonging to a particular ethnic group
- ethnically adverb
- in terms of ethnic background
- multiethnic adjective
- containing several ethnic groups
Commonly confused: ethnic group or ethical?
ethnic group vs ethical
Ethical means concerned with right and wrong; it sounds similar to ethnic but has no link to ancestry or culture.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'ethnic group' correctly?
Choose one answer.
The first sentence uses the noun for communities sharing heritage. Nationality or passport (options 2 and 3) is about citizenship, not shared culture, and option 4 misuses it as a verb.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “ethnic group”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.