Definition of "ethnic" in English

adjective

1. Of or relating to a group of people having common racial, ancestral, national, religious or cultural origins.

2. Characteristic of a foreign or a minority group's culture.

   • I like to eat ethnic food

3. Representative of a folk or traditional mode of expression.

4. (historical) Heathen, not Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

noun

1. An ethnic person, especially a foreigner or member of an immigrant community.

2. (archaic) A heathen, a pagan.

3. (in classical scholarship) The demonym of an Ancient Greek city.

   • Coinage with the ethnic ΑΝΤΙΟΧΕΩΝ ΠΡΟΣ ΕΥΦΡΑΤΗΝ survives from the mid-second century A.D.