asian
/ˈeɪʒən/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.69 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A person from the continent of Asia, or a descendant thereof - especially:
Australian usage; Canadian usage; New Zealand usage; American usage
noun
A domestic cat of a breed similar to the Burmese.
Example Sentences
- "Hate crimes and attacks on Asians have captured the local news and the national attention since 2020, producing a stream of content that showed innocent people being attacked and belittled in never-ending variations on the same violent theme."
- "We call upon you to be ready to take over from the non-citizens who are leaving the country. As you are aware, I, on Wednesday the 9th August, 1972, signed a Decree revoking with effect from that date, all entry permits and certificates of residence which had been granted to British citizens of Asian origin and the nationals of India, Pakistan and Bangla Desh. They were, however, permitted to stay in Uganda for a period of 90 days from that day [...]"
- "It is not true that Asians were inadaptable in East Africa. Nearly all Indian men learned to speak English, and, by the second generation, both sexes had become fluently Anglophone, while continuing to use their native tongue (mostly Gujarati, Cutchi, Punjabi or Hindustani). Most Indians also learned the upland Swahili pidgin which is the trade language of East Africa; while few spoke the “correct” coastal Swahili, their fluency in “kitchen Swahili” was often superior to that of the Europeans. The more rural Indian shopkeepers did indeed become somewhat Africanized, while the urban Indian became more Anglicized."
- "If radio and television programmes are anything to go by, Asians in Britain get up early on a Sunday."
- "Were there Taliban beheading people? I didn't tell my parents, but I flinched if an Asian-looking man came close."
- "There are white, black, Asian and Chinese Britons, just as there are any number of different sorts of Americans."
Etymology
From Latin āsiānus. By surface analysis, Asia + -an. The modern North American and Australasian usage, referring to East and Southeast Asians collectively, seems to be a shortened form of "Asian American", a term whose origins activists and academics trace back to 1968 and University of California, Berkeley (UCLA) students Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, who, inspired by the Black Power Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War, founded the "Asian American Political Alliance" as a way to unite Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino American students on campus. It replaced the term "Mongoloid", but still continued the racial grouping of "Mongoloid". The usage in Britain and some of its former colonies such as South Africa, Kenya and Uganda, stems from South Asians historically forming the bulk of immigrants from the continent of Asia to these places. In the rest of the Anglosphere, the word "Asian" is sometimes, albeit less frequently, used to refer to South Asians and Central Asians, but rarely (if ever) to Near Easterners.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: āsiānus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈeɪʒən/
- British English: /ˈeɪʒən/
Usage
- Australian usage
- Canadian usage
- New Zealand usage
- American usage
- British usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
Asiaphobe
Asiaphobia
Asiaphobic
Asiatic → Asiatically
Asian-Pacific
British Asian
Central Asian
East Asian