# ethnicity

Pronunciation: say "eth-NIS-i-tee" /ɛθˈnɪsɪti/

## Noun

1. The shared heritage that marks out a people, above all their common ancestry, culture, and language or their national history.
   - Simple: The things a group of people share, like their family roots, culture or language.
   - _Her novels explore ethnicity and belonging among the children of immigrants._
   - _Researchers studied how ethnicity shapes the way families celebrate weddings._
2. A group of people who share a common ethnic background.
   - Simple: A group of people who share the same family roots and culture.
   - _No single ethnicity makes up a majority of the city's population._
   - _Children from a dozen ethnicities share the same classroom._
3. A softer, more polite word for race or for common ancestry. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A gentler word people use for race or family background.
   - _The police report gave the suspect's ethnicity only as white._
   - _People keep asking about my ethnicity because of my dark skin and curly hair._

## Origin

Formed from ethnic + the suffix -ity.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/ethnicity (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).