ethnic cleansing


noun
  1. the elimination of an unwanted ethnic group or groups from a society, as by genocide or forced emigration.

Origin of ethnic cleansing

1
First recorded in 1985–90

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use ethnic cleansing in a sentence

  • ethnic cleansing has many faces, brutality is not its integrated feature.

    After the Rain | Sam Vaknin
  • This instability of boundaries led to ethnic cleansing, to numerous international congresses, to fitful wars.

    After the Rain | Sam Vaknin
  • It is only when ethnic cleansing is combined with self-determination that a fracturing of the solutions occurs.

    After the Rain | Sam Vaknin
  • Self-determination is employed to facilitate ethnic cleansing rather than to prevent it.

    After the Rain | Sam Vaknin
  • There are many variants of this malignant, brutal, condemnable, criminal and inefficient form of ethnic cleansing.

    After the Rain | Sam Vaknin

British Dictionary definitions for ethnic cleansing

ethnic cleansing

noun
  1. euphemistic the violent removal by one ethnic group of other ethnic groups from the population of a particular area: used esp of the activities of Serbs against Croats and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Cultural definitions for ethnic cleansing

ethnic cleansing

A euphemism to describe the forceful removal or genocide of minority ethnic groups (see ethnicity) during the breakup of Yugoslavia. It was used mainly to describe the Serbs' attacks on Muslims in Bosnia and Albanians in Kosovo. (See Slobodan Milosevic and Kosovo War.)

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.