Asian
nounadjectivecommon in dialogue
- Canada//ˈeɪʒən//
- Canada//ˈeɪʃən//
- Australia//ˈæɪʒən//
- Australia//ˈæɪʃən//
A person from the continent of Asia, or a descendant thereof - especially: A person from or with ancestry in East or Southeast Asia, occasionally South Asia.
noun
- 1
A person from the continent of Asia, or a descendant thereof - especially: A person from or with ancestry in East or Southeast Asia, occasionally South Asia.
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.
- 2
A person from the continent of Asia, or a descendant thereof - especially: A person from or with ancestry in South Asia.
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.
- 3
A domestic cat of a breed similar to the Burmese.
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.
adjective
- 1
Of, relating to or from Asia.
There are white, black, Asian and Chinese Britons, just as there are any number of different sorts of Americans.
And some Asian countries are tightening their immigration laws. Japan reinforced its strict stance in January when a court upheld the country’s ban against dual citizenship, rejecting a lawsuit filed by Japanese citizens living in Europe.
Forms
- plural
- Asians
Asian · A person from the continent of Asia, or a descendant thereof - especially: A person from or with ancestry in East or Southeast Asia, occasionally…
aside · To or on one side so as to be out of the way.ask · To request or petition. To request (information, or an answer…Ask · The first male human, according to the Poetic Edda.