Indigenous

How to spell indigenous

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce indigenous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does indigenous mean?

1. adjectiveOriginating or occurring naturally in a particular place rather than introduced from elsewhere.

Indigenous in a sentence

• The report focused on plant species indigenous to the region.

• Many indigenous communities have lived on this land for thousands of years.

Where does indigenous come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin indigena, meaning 'a native' or someone born in a particular place. That noun was built from an old prefix indu, an archaic form of in meaning 'within' or 'in', joined to the root gignere, 'to beget' or 'to be born', the same family that gives us 'genesis', 'genus', and 'generate'. So at its heart indigenous literally describes what is 'born within' a region rather than brought in from elsewhere. English adopted it in the early 1600s, originally as a fairly neutral scientific term for plants and animals naturally occurring in an area, before it widened to describe peoples native to a land. The spelling trap lives in that middle 'gen' and the unstressed vowels around it: writers often want a 'j' where the soft 'g' sits, or muddle the schwa-filled '-genous' ending.

How the word is built

• indi- (within, from the Latin indu: in)
• gen (to be born, beget)
• -ous (adjective suffix)