Prefix · people / culture / nation
From Greek "ethnos" (nation, people): appears in words about peoples and cultures, like ethnic and ethnography.
Written by Bryan López, English teacher · Updated
Ethn- (or ethno-) comes from the Greek ethnos, which meant "nation", "tribe" or "people" with their own culture. Today it appears in academic words from anthropology, sociology and linguistics, related to human groups and their cultures.
Ethn- gives English everyday words like ethnic and ethnicity, which you see in news, surveys and forms. The more academic words built on it describe the study of cultures, writing about them and the habit of judging other cultures by your own. Ethn- and ethno- are the same root: the shorter form is the one in ethnic and ethnicity.
Ethno- combines with Greek and Latin roots to form academic terms about human groups:
"Ethnic" describes something related to a specific cultural or national group. "Ethnicity" refers to a person's cultural identity, including language, traditions, and ancestry.
ethn-/ˈeθ.noʊ/
Tap the button to hear how the prefix sounds. Each word in the table has its own audio.
"Ethnic" refers to cultural identity — shared language, customs, and traditions — not strictly biological characteristics. While "ethnic" and "racial" sometimes overlap in everyday use, they are conceptually distinct.
A trick to remember it
Think of an ethnic group sharing a culture: ethn- = people, culture. ethnic, ethnography.
Exercise 1 · Form the word
Exercise 2 · Pick the right one
Which word describes the tendency to see your own culture as the standard against which all others should be judged?
The prefix ethn- from Greek "ethnos" (nation, people): appears in words about peoples and cultures, like ethnic and ethnography.
The prefix ethn- is pronounced /ˈeθ.noʊ/. For example, "ethnic".
"ic" becomes "ethnic". It is a typical example of the ethn- prefix.
From Greek "anthropos" (human being): appears in words about humankind, like anthropology and philanthropist.
From Greek "kosmos" (universe, order): appears in words about the universe and the world, like cosmology and cosmopolitan.
From Greek "demos" (people): appears in words about society and population, like democracy and demography.
un-, re-, pre-, dis-, over-, in-... every beginning you need to unlock thousands of English words at once.