xenophobia

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From xeno- +‎ -phobia.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˌzɛn.əˈfəʊ.bɪ.ə/
  • (US) IPA(key): /ˌziː.nəˈfoʊ.bi.ə/, /ˌzɛn.əˈfoʊ.bi.ə/
  • Rhymes: -əʊbiə
  • Audio (Canada):(file)

Noun

xenophobia (countable and uncountable, plural xenophobias)

  1. A fear, antipathy, or hatred of strangers or foreigners.
    • 2020 January 28, Mairov Zonszein, “Christian Zionist philo-Semitism is driving Trump’s Israel policy”, in The Washington Post‎[1], archived from the original on 30 January 2020:
      The great sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argued that philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism both fall under “allosemitism”: literally Othering the Jew. He defined it not as resentment of what is different, which is xenophobia, but rather of what defies order and clear categories. In 1997, he wrote, “The Jew is ambivalence incarnate. And ambivalence is ambivalence mostly because it cannot be contemplated without ambivalent feeling: it is simultaneously attractive and repelling.”
    • 2021 March 19, Frida Ghitis, “The GOP’s xenophobia is fueling toxic culture of hate”, in CNN‎[2]:
      The United States is not the only country where xenophobia pays dividends for politicians.
    • 2025 September 13, Simon Kuper, “How Maga rewrote the Little Red Book”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 18:
      Like the Communist party before it, the Front National claimed to speak for the “working class”. The class enemy was rebranded from “bourgeoisie” to “elite”, communist xenophobia about “international capital” was supplemented with xenophobia against immigrants, and the proletariat had to ally with former adversaries such as small business owners, but the essential claim of working-class dignity remained intact.
  2. (science fiction, rare, nonstandard) A fear of aliens.

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