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nativist
[ ney-ti-vist ]
noun
- a person who urges the promotion of the interests of inhabitants born in a country over those of immigrants:
Nativists advocate a hard line against immigrants, but loud and aggressive efforts have proven to be an electoral bust.
- a person who advocates or engages in the preservation or revival of an Indigenous culture:
Some nativists began urging fellow Mi’kmaq to pray to Gluskap, their traditional culture hero, instead of to the “foreign” Christ.
- Philosophy. a person who argues for the existence of ideas that are not learned but are part of the original constitution of the mind:
Nativists emphasize genetics, biology, and innate mechanisms, while empiricists insist that babies are born into the world with no knowledge of it.
- Psycholinguistics. a person who argues for the innateness hypothesis, that humans are born with a knowledge of certain universal elements of language structure that comes into play during first-language acquisition:
The differences in language ability in subjects with Down syndrome may lie at the level of the brain’s microcircuitry, where nativists locate innate language knowledge.
adjective
- of, being, or relating to nativists or their views:
Many countries have seen the emergence of angry nativist movements aimed at combating further immigration.
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Other Words From
- na·tiv·is·tic [ney-ti-, vis, -tik] adjective
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Word History and Origins
Origin of nativist1
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Example Sentences
The issue of low-skilled immigration naturally provokes intense nativist sentiments.
Even the Nativist gangs were led already by a couple of Irish Catholics.
And the problem here goes beyond the tricky navigation of nativist-dominated presidential primaries.
The attacks were personal, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes even verging on nativist (who knew Democrats hated Switzerland so much).
And by nativist I mean people who are in essence afraid of the world.
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