postcolonial

adjective

post·​co·​lo·​nial ˌpōst-kə-ˈlō-nē-əl How to pronounce postcolonial (audio)
-nyəl
: of, relating to, or being a time after colonialism
postcolonial America
Carter was the first American president to take seriously the entire postcolonial era that has remade the globe since World War II.Garry Wills

Examples of postcolonial in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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During the 1930s and 40s, amid ongoing political turbulence, artists began a crucial negotiation between an emerging postcolonial national consciousness and a burgeoning modernism. Chadd Scott, Forbes.com, 20 June 2025 Denmark’s postcolonial neglect of Greenland goes back much further than Trump or Frederiksen, of course. Morten Høi Jensen, The Dial, 19 June 2025 In the postcolonial period, that access became more complicated: By 1978, India banned the export of rhesus macaques for research after public concern over their use in military and radiation experiments. Marina Bolotnikova, Vox, 18 June 2025 Mining boosters argued that the deep sea could provide a crucial alternative to terrestrial mineral markets controlled by potentially unfriendly postcolonial governments. Time, 17 June 2025 See All Example Sentences for postcolonial

Word History

First Known Use

1883, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of postcolonial was in 1883

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Cite this Entry

“Postcolonial.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postcolonial. Accessed 27 Jun. 2025.

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