segregate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to separate or set apart from others or from the main body or group; isolate.
to segregate exceptional children; to segregate hardened criminals.
- Antonyms:
- integrate
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to require, by law or custom, the separation of (an ethnic, racial, religious, or other minority group) from the dominant majority.
verb (used without object)
-
to separate, withdraw, or go apart; separate from the main body and collect in one place; become segregated.
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to practice, require, or enforce segregation, especially racial segregation.
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Genetics. (of allelic genes) to separate during meiosis.
noun
verb
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to set or be set apart from others or from the main group
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(tr) to impose segregation on (a racial or minority group)
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genetics metallurgy to undergo or cause to undergo segregation
Other Word Forms
- nonsegregable adjective
- nonsegregative adjective
- resegregate verb
- segregable adjective
- segregative adjective
- segregator noun
- unsegregable adjective
- unsegregating adjective
- unsegregative adjective
Etymology
Origin of segregate
1400–50 in sense “segregated”; 1535–45 as transitive v.; late Middle English segregat < Latin sēgregātus (past participle of sēgregāre to part from the flock), equivalent to sē- se- + greg- (stem of grex flock) + -ātus -ate 1; gregarious
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“Kin,” set in the segregated South in the 1950s and ’60s, focuses on the crucial importance of mothering, sisterhood and close female friendships in young women’s lives.
A team from Georgetown University is investigating their deaths at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, a segregated juvenile detention facility in Cheltenham, Maryland, and memorializing them.
From Barron's
As a Black woman who grew up in the segregated South, she transmuted the prejudice her community faced into striking scenes of human connection, many of them sketched from memory and some rendered as linocuts.
From Los Angeles Times
A domestic in stringently segregated Greenville, Tibby brought home books and magazines, such as National Geographic, that her white employers’ children had discarded.
From Los Angeles Times
Since the 2023 violence, the communities have been largely segregated, confined to separate regions, with thousands displaced from their homes.
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
