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im·mi·grant

(ĭmĭ-grənt)

1. A person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another.

2. An organism that establishes itself in an area where it previously did not exist.

adj.

Of or relating to immigrants or the act of immigrating.

Usage Note: Everyone agrees that the word immigrant can be applied to someone who moves voluntarily to a given country or region intending to settle there. But is it acceptable to refer to the enslaved Africans who were brought to America against their will in the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s as “immigrants”? In recent years, more than one politician and textbook publisher has attracted ridicule and condemnation for describing the enslaved Africans as if they were simply another of the many immigrant groups that helped make America what it is today. Whether the slaves were or were not immigrants in some sense is a matter of delicate semantic interpretation, but it is probably not appropriate to refer to them as such without significant qualification; to do so is likely to be taken as ignoring the extraordinary brutality of the transatlantic slave trade.

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

Indo-European Roots

Semitic Roots

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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