untouchable
4
9.9
- adjective
- /ʌnˈtʌtʃəbl/
- Slur
:
intocable
- In some regions of India, people treated as untouchable face discrimination and social exclusion.
Examples
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This is because he was considered an "untouchable."
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In view of the traditional Rana hostility to any form of education for commoners, let alone for the untouchable Damai, this was a major breakthrough.
Academic text (1991) -
Still I am treated as an untouchable in the society.
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You are an untouchable by birth.
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And I had to say to myself, I am an untouchable.
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I was shocked that I would be introduced as an untouchable.
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Unfortunately I was born a Hindu untouchable.
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And segregation is evil and sinful because it stigmatizes the segregated as an untouchable in a caste system.
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Less fortunately, you might be born a Shudra, whose life is devoted to the service of the three higher castes, and, still less fortunately, you might be born an untouchable, fated to do the distasteful jobs no one else can take on without pollution.
Academic text (2004) -
The nuns taught us English—even though we were harijans—we belong to a caste that is supposedly untouchable.
Fiction book (2000)
Antonyms
How Shunned
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Untouchable was used by English speakers for a group in South Asia and comes from Hindi achhut meaning 'not to be touched' or 'not pure', which explains the old, unfair idea that certain people were forbidden from physical contact.