: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign
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xenophobia was our Word of the Day on 04/20/2013. Hear the podcast!
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Recent Examples of xenophobia from the Web
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His voice hoarse from nonstop campaigning, López Obrador dismissed President Donald Trump’s order to deploy National Guard troops along the border as propaganda, a political ploy designed to stir xenophobia.
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My work deals with sociopolitical concerns surrounding gender disparities and xenophobia.
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Piper has since produced hundreds of paintings, drawings, photographs, and multimedia works exploring preconceptions of race and gender and addressing themes like xenophobia and social engagement.
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The parallel forces of nationalism and xenophobia, once again permissible in the public sphere.
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Hearst papers appealed to the urban working class, mixing populist and progressive politics with nationalism and xenophobia and later isolationism.
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One episode consists of a broadly comic but blistering satire of xenophobia and obfuscation of truth, complete with a birther conspiracy reference and an alien visitor who promises to build a wall to block humans from outer space.
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Her films, which have won two Oscars and three Emmys, range from reportage on xenophobia in South Africa to an inquiry into the ethics of honor killings in Pakistan.
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The rising tide of xenophobia in a country that saw millions of its own citizens migrate to North and South America in the last century doesn't bode well.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'xenophobia.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Did You Know?
If you look back to the ancient Greek terms that underlie the word xenophobia, you'll discover that xenophobic individuals are literally "stranger fearing." Xenophobia, that elegant-sounding name for an aversion to persons unfamiliar, ultimately derives from two Greek terms: xenos, which can be translated as either "stranger" or "guest," and phobos, which means either "fear" or "flight." Phobos is the ultimate source of all English -phobia terms, but many of those were actually coined in English or New Latin using the combining form -phobia (which traces back to phobos). Xenophobia itself came to us by way of New Latin and first appeared in print in English in the late 19th century.
Origin and Etymology of xenophobia
New Latin
Other Psychology Terms
XENOPHOBIA Defined for English Language Learners
Medical Dictionary
: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign
Learn More about xenophobia
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See words that rhyme with xenophobia Spanish Central: Translation of xenophobia Nglish: Translation of xenophobia for Spanish speakers
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