- native
- native adj Native, indigenous, endemic, aboriginal, autochthonous all mean belonging to or associated with a particular place by birth or origin.A person or thing is native (opposed to foreign, alien) that has had his or its birth or origin in the place in question{
a native American
}{a native New Yorker
}{a native tradition
}{native artists left the state and studied . . . abroad— Amer. Guide Series: Mich.
}{a one-story structure of native stone— S. S. Kingy
}A person or thing is indigenous (opposed to naturalized, exotic) that is not only native but also has not been introduced from elsewhere into the place indicated{maize is indigenous to America
}{Southern Rhodesia at present employs about half a million Africans, of whom half are indigenous and half are migrants from neighboring territories— Peter Scott
}{no written flora anywhere in the world admits as indigenous that lusty weed . . . called Good-King-Henry— Peattie
}Indigenous is applied usually to kinds (as species or races) rather than to individuals and often implies reference to a larger area than native (as to a country, or to a region characterized by a particular type of climate).A thing is endemic (opposed to exotic and in medicine to pandemic) which not only is indigenous but is also peculiar to, or in the case of a disease, prevalent in, a restricted region because of special conditions favoring its growth or existence{edelweiss is endemic in the Alps
}{that complacency which is an endemic disease of academic groups— Conant
}A person or thing is aboriginal that belongs to the earliest known race inhabiting a country or to the people found there (as by explorers, colonists, and invaders); the term usually implies the lack of a known predecessor and often connotes a primitive culture{Indians are the aboriginal Americans
}{America must turn again to catch the spirit of her own dark, aboriginal continent— D. H. Lawrence
}{the Kooboos, a primitive aboriginal race in the southeast of Sumatra— Frazefy
}Aboriginal is more rarely applied to the earliest ascertainable native plants and animals.Something is autochthonous which has its origin in the place in which it is found{autochthonous rocks
}{an autochthonous flora
}When applied to races of men or their achievements, it implies purity of stock or freedom from all external influences{as long as the States continue to ... be dominated by the poetry of the Old World, and remain unsupplied with autochthonous song ... so long will they stop short of first-class nationality— Whit man
}Antonyms: alien, foreign
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
