xenophobia

noun

xe·no·pho·bia ˌze-nə-ˈfō-bē-ə

ˌzē-

Synonyms of xenophobia next

: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign

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. Xenophobia itself came to us by way of New Latin and first appeared in print in English in the late 19th century.

Examples of xenophobia in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Those tweets prompted such a fierce response from BTS fans, accusing her of xenophobia, that a large BTS fan club in Argentina felt compelled to try to calm their fellow fans down. —

Natalie Alcoba, New York Times, 4 Nov. 2023 Venezuelan immigrants are ostracized in Colombia amid xenophobia and shifting politics. —

Los Angeles Times, 28 Oct. 2023 Aiming his curiosity and penchant for research at Charlie Chan, conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker, and now Wong, Huang delves into individuals who soared into the pop culture consciousness of their day despite political tumult, racial bias, and xenophobia. —

Erin Douglass, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 Oct. 2023 Sign up But the coup de grâce came from President Biden himself last week, with the announcement that his administration would be waiving over two dozen federal laws to pursue an expansion of the literal monument to Trump’s xenophobia: the border wall. —

Felipe De La Hoz, The New Republic, 11 Oct. 2023 That was the one chance Republicans had to seize their party back from Trump (and just return to the normal, pre-Trump, run-of-the-mill racist dog-whistling, xenophobia, and warmongering). —

Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 1 Sep. 2023 Haiti's compounding crises have pushed thousands of refugees across the border into its more prosperous neighbor, a country with a long history of xenophobia against Haitian immigrants. —

Widlore Mérancourt, BostonGlobe.com, 15 Sep. 2023 Haiti’s compounding crises have pushed thousands of refugees across the border into its more prosperous neighbor, a country with a long history of xenophobia against Haitian immigrants. —

Amanda Coletta, Washington Post, 14 Sep. 2023 Historians say the massacre was driven by the government’s growing concerns about Korean independence, as well as xenophobia and anti-Korean sentiment among the general population. —

Takehiko Kambayashi, The Christian Science Monitor, 1 Sep. 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'xenophobia.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.