alienated

[ey-lee-uh-ney-tid, eyl-yuh-]

adjective

1. indifferent or hostile.

   A year after the floods, the failure of the promised rehabilitation package has fed an already alienated populace's sense of hurt and anger towards the government.

2. withdrawn or isolated from the objective world.

   Albert Camus's novel The Stranger is the story of an alienated, unfeeling man who kills someone for no reason and dies without remorse.

3. turned away from its original purpose or course; transferred or diverted.

   The investment firm, which misappropriated millions of dollars committed to it, was required to restore the alienated funds to the plaintiff.

4. Law.,  (of property, title, rights, etc.) transferred or conveyed to another.

   Much reservation territory is now owned and controlled by non-Indigenous people, depriving Indigenous nations of billions of dollars in potential income from these alienated lands.

verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of alienate.

Other Word Forms

• unalienated adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of alienated¹

alienate ( def. ) + -ed ²

Example Sentences

Chief Executive Elon Musk’s foray into politics as head of the Department of Government Efficiency also alienated many potential Tesla buyers and led to boycotts and protests at Tesla dealerships.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

He still brakes for bad puns and double-negative understatements, but he avoids the kind of under-metabolized research that sometimes alienated his early readers.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

The Henry Murray Stage upstairs at the Matrix Theatre has been transformed into an adolescent hideaway, where music and literature are the only salves for alienated brooding.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, a city with a mainly white population, she said she felt alienated with her natural hair as "children would touch and make fun of it".

Read more on BBC

Starting in the 1980s, he says, rural Americans started to feel alienated and left behind while cities benefited from globalisation and technological change.

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Related Words

• disaffected