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The Greek word ethnos means "nation" or "people". So ethnocentricity shows itself in a lack of respect for other ways of life, and an ethnocentric person feels that his or her own nation or group is the cultural center of the world. Ethnocentric describes the kind of person who behaves badly when traveling in foreign countries, often called an "Ugly American" (from a book and movie of the same name). Whenever you hear someone making fun of the way a foreigner speaks English, just remember that it's the foreigner, not the person laughing at him, who actually can speak a foreign language.

Examples of ethnocentric in a Sentence

The review was criticized for its ethnocentric bias.

Recent Examples on the Web Netflix’s Lupin, a Black French series about an international cat-burglar, a non-ethnocentric character, had 75 million viewers globally in its first month of airing. — Court Stroud, Forbes, 3 June 2021 Plus, if applied with suitable leverage and departmental support, this is a force strong enough to counterbalance the historical tendency toward anthropocentric and ethnocentric approaches that tend to advantage narrow learner self-interest. — Amandeep Midha, Forbes, 18 May 2021 To say that feminism is like Nazism is to say feminism is murderous, is ethnocentric violence. — Alexa Mikhail, USA TODAY, 19 Feb. 2021 Then the state department of education put forward a model curriculum so extreme and ethnocentric that the state Senate’s Democratic supermajority balked. — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 30 Aug. 2020 Launched in late 2013, the Vox party campaigns from an ethnocentric platform and has proposed building a wall to keep out Moroccans. — Diana Spechler, Washington Post, 17 Dec. 2019 Both were ineffectual, weighed down by ethnocentric divisions between the Akan and the Ga, and dominated by lawyers and wealthy merchants. — Akwasi Kwarteng Amoako-gyampah, Quartz Africa, 7 Aug. 2019 That sort of ethnocentric cry, designed to stifle dissent and rally a political base, has helped fuel totalitarianism around the world. — Mercury News & East Bay Times Editorial Boards, The Mercury News, 18 July 2019 The people of Refugio have a strong, ethnocentric identity and a grit and determination born of being raised in harder times than these. — Carmen K. Sisson, The Christian Science Monitor, 18 Oct. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ethnocentric.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.