Discrimination

How to spell discrimination

14 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce discrimination

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does discrimination mean?

1. nounUnjust or prejudicial treatment of people based on a category such as race, sex, age, or disability.
2. nounThe ability to recognise fine distinctions and make careful, perceptive judgements.

Discrimination in a sentence

• The new policy aims to stamp out discrimination in hiring.

• Tasting the wines requires real discrimination between subtle flavours.

• She filed a complaint alleging discrimination on the grounds of age.

• The editor showed great discrimination in selecting only the strongest essays.

Where does discrimination come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb discriminare, meaning 'to divide, separate, or distinguish', which was built on the noun discrimen, 'a dividing line or distinction'. That noun in turn grew from discernere, 'to separate or sift apart', a compound of dis- ('apart') and cernere ('to sift or perceive'). When English adopted the word in the early 1600s, its first meaning was the neutral and even admirable one: the act of telling fine things apart, the keen judgement of a discerning mind. Only later, especially from the nineteenth century onward, did it take on the now dominant sense of treating people unfairly on the basis of category. The shared cernere root also gave English 'discern', 'discreet', and 'certain', and remembering the buried word 'crimin' (as in distinction, not crime) helps fix the awkward middle of the spelling.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart)
• crimin (from Latin discrimen: distinction, dividing line)
• -ation (noun of action)