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Asian

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: asian and asían

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

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.

Pronunciation

Noun

Asian (plural Asians)

  1. A person from the continent of Asia, or a descendant thereof - especially:
    1. (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) A person from or with ancestry in East or Southeast Asia, occasionally South Asia.
      • 2022 February 17, Eddie Kim, “Is the ‘Boba Liberal’ Really a Race Traitor?”, in MEL Magazine‎:
        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. (British, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda) A person from or with ancestry in South Asia.
      • 1972 August 12, Idi Amin Dada, Speeches by His Excellency the President General Idi Amin Dada, Message to the Nation on 12th/13th August, 1972, Address to Disrict Representatives, 29th August, 1972, Mid-night Address to the Nation, 17th December, 1972‎, Entebbe, Uganda: Government printer:
        We call upon you to be ready to take over from the non-citizens who are leaving the country. As you are aware, I, on Wednesday the 9th August, 1972, signed a Decree revoking with effect from that date, all entry permits and certificates of residence which had been granted to British citizens of Asian origin and the nationals of India, Pakistan and Bangla Desh. They were, however, permitted to stay in Uganda for a period of 90 days from that day [...]
      • 1981, Pierre van den Berghe, The Ethnic Phenomenon‎, page 152:
        It is not true that Asians were inadaptable in East Africa. Nearly all Indian men learned to speak English, and, by the second generation, both sexes had become fluently Anglophone, while continuing to use their native tongue (mostly Gujarati, Cutchi, Punjabi or Hindustani). Most Indians also learned the upland Swahili pidgin which is the trade language of East Africa; while few spoke the “correct” coastal Swahili, their fluency in “kitchen Swahili” was often superior to that of the Europeans. The more rural Indian shopkeepers did indeed become somewhat Africanized, while the urban Indian became more Anglicized.
      • 1987 May, Paul Oliver, “Movie Mahal: Indian cinema on ITV Channel 4”, in Popular Music, →DOI, page 215:
        If radio and television programmes are anything to go by, Asians in Britain get up early on a Sunday.
      • 2013, Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala:
        Were there Taliban beheading people? I didn't tell my parents, but I flinched if an Asian-looking man came close.
  2. A domestic cat of a breed similar to the Burmese.

Usage notes

  • The American usage of "Asian" (East, Southeast, sometimes South Asian) is internationally used outside of English (e.g. in Turkish, German, Swedish, Korean, French, etc.).

Synonyms

Translations

Adjective

Asian (not comparable)

  1. Of, relating to or from Asia.
    • 2015 June 4, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, “The beauty contest winner making Japan look at itself”, in BBC‎:
      There are white, black, Asian and Chinese Britons
    • 2021 March 15, Jessie Yeung, “These Asian countries are giving dual citizens an ultimatum on nationality – and loyalty”, in CNN‎:
      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.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Blends
Expressions: animal species
Expressions: other terms
Expressions from compound words with “Asia”

Translations

Anagrams

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