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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

tokenism en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree English token Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íd͏̌d͏̌ō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō) Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *-mós Ancient Greek -μός (-mós) Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós)der. English -ism English tokenism From token + -ism.

Meanings

  1. (countable, uncountable) A policy of formally complying with efforts to achieve a goal by making small, token gestures; especially to hire a minimal number of ethnically diverse or disadvantaged people.
    • This has to be meaningful contribution and participation – tokenism will only come to bite us in the future. 2023 February 2, Patrick Noack, “Humans are terrible at planning for the future: Here's how we can change that”, in CNN, archived from the original on 03 Mar 2023:
    • We know the prime minister regards environmental matters as mere tokenism. But we at least expected his ritual once-a-year speech on the issue. 2004 April 27, Matthew Tempest, quoting Norman Baker, “Green groups dismiss climate change 'tokenism'”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 18 Jan 2022:
    • Contemporary museums, they need to stop tokenism. Collect an Iranian artist here, a South African artist there or whatever. They need to really begin to try to properly take on … what is contemporary culture today? 2020 July 9, Mark Brown, quoting Anish Kapoor, “Anish Kapoor says art gallery 'tokenism' with diversity must end”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 14 Feb 2024:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
tokenisms Number=Plur lexicographic

Relateds

tokenistic · tokenist · tokenise

Translations (5)

pt tokenismo (policy of formally complying with efforts to achieve a goal by making small, token gestures) · fr tokénisme (policy of formally complying with efforts to achieve a goal by making small, token gestures) · es tokenismo (policy of formally complying with efforts to achieve a goal by making small, token gestures) · gd tòcanas (policy of formally complying with efforts to achieve a goal by making small, token gestures) · sh tokenizam (policy of formally complying with efforts to achieve a goal by making small, token gestures)