aboriginal

aboriginal — noun

1. someone whose ancestors lived in a country long before settlers from other lands

1.nounC1
Definition

someone whose ancestors lived in a country long before settlers from other lands came and took control of it.

Example

The museum in Sydney has a quiet room where Aboriginals tell stories about their ancestors.

capitalised when referring to Australian indigenous peoples

Many Aboriginals in Taiwan still speak languages that older Mandarin teachers do not understand.

Common collocations
  • the Aboriginals of [place]
  • an Aboriginal from
Synonyms
  • indigenous person

    more neutral and currently preferred in formal writing

  • native

    older and broader; can sound dated or offensive in some contexts

  • first peoples

    respectful collective term, common in Canada

Antonyms
  • settler

    someone who arrived later and took up land

  • colonist

    settler arriving as part of an organised colonising power

Usage Note

Today many speakers prefer 'Aboriginal people' or 'Aboriginal person' over the bare noun, because the noun form can sound dated or impersonal. When referring to Australia specifically, the word is usually capitalised.

Common Mistakes

My friend is a aboriginal from Hualien.
My friend is an Aboriginal from Hualien.
use 'an' before the vowel sound and capitalise when naming a specific people.
The aboriginals was protesting outside.
The Aboriginals were protesting outside.
the noun is countable and takes a plural verb.

aboriginal — adjective

Word family

  • aborigine
    nounC1
  • aboriginally
    adverbC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

All four words point to peoples who lived in a place before outsiders arrived, but they differ in tone and current acceptability. 'Aboriginal' is most strongly tied to Australia, where it is the standard self-identifying term and is usually capitalised. 'Indigenous' is now the most neutral and widely used choice in journalism, law, and academic writing across the world; it travels well between Asia, Africa, and the Americas. 'Native' is the oldest of the four and the most casual, but on its own it can sound dated and is sometimes felt to be disrespectful when applied to people, so writers often pair it with another word, as in 'Native American'. 'First-nation', often written 'First Nations', is the preferred phrase in Canada. Compare: 'Aboriginal art from Arnhem Land', 'an indigenous community in Peru', 'Native American jewellery', 'a First Nations chief'.

aboriginal ↗indigenous ↗native ↗first-nation

Common collocations

Nouns

  • aboriginal people
  • aboriginal art
  • aboriginal language
  • aboriginal community
  • aboriginal elder
  • aboriginal land
  • aboriginal culture
  • aboriginal species

Adverbs

  • truly aboriginal
  • originally aboriginal

Phrases

  • of aboriginal descent
  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Prepositions

  • aboriginal to [place]

Etymology

LatinEnglish

The word travelled into English in the early 1600s from the Latin phrase 'ab origine', meaning 'from the beginning'. Latin writers used it to describe the very first people of Italy, before the Romans came. English borrowed the longer form 'aboriginal' a little later, and from the 1800s onward the word became closely tied to the indigenous peoples of Australia, who began to use it themselves. The shorter noun 'aborigine' is from the same root.