orientalism
noun
Simple meaning
A patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
awreeehntuhlihzuhmSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɔɹiˈɛntəlɪzəm
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
postcolonialism
A patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.
An Eastern word, expression, or custom.
artarchitectureliterature
The tendency to represent eastern subjects, to assume stylistical characteristics original of the East.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (postcolonialism) A patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.
Used this way, orientalism is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It criticises, but without shouting.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Critical but measured
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use orientalism
- “Orientalisms can be found in Mozart's operas.”noun
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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.