ethnic cleansing

noun

: the expulsion, imprisonment, or killing of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority in order to achieve ethnic homogeneity

Examples of ethnic cleansing in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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Even he might have been shocked, though, to see an Israeli government bent on ethnic cleansing through bombing and starvation. Ian Buruma, New Yorker, 22 Sep. 2025 Israel’s far-right has long wanted to move Palestinians out of Gaza, a prospect that critics have said would amount to ethnic cleansing. Lauren Izso, CNN Money, 18 Sep. 2025 Expelling the population would amount to ethnic cleansing. Bloomberg Opinion, Twin Cities, 16 Sep. 2025 When the murder of 100,000 people, many of them women and children, is mentioned or denounced, or when someone dares to use terms such as genocide, ethnocide, ethnic cleansing or similar, most people choose to take issue with the characterization, quibbling over semantics. Uriel Kon september 2, Literary Hub, 2 Sep. 2025 See All Example Sentences for ethnic cleansing

Word History

First Known Use

1991, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of ethnic cleansing was in 1991

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Cite this Entry

“Ethnic cleansing.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethnic%20cleansing. Accessed 1 Oct. 2025.

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