native american
noun · adjective
Simple meaning
Any member of the peoples living in North or South America before the Europeans arrived.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
naytihvuhmehruhkuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈneɪtɪvəˈmɛɹəkən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Any member of the peoples living in North or South America before the Europeans arrived
A member of some Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
An Indigenous person of the contiguous United States.
adjective
Of the American Indians.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An Indigenous person of the contiguous United States.
Used this way, native american is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.