autochthon

American  

[aw-tok-thuhn] / ɔˈtɒk θən /

noun

• autochthons,
  plural
• autochthones
  plural

1. an aboriginal inhabitant.

2. Ecology. one of the indigenous animals or plants of a region.

3. Geology. a geological formation formed in the region where found.

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autochthon British  

/ ɔːˈtɒkθən, -θɒn /

noun

1. (often plural) one of the earliest known inhabitants of any country; aboriginal

2. an animal or plant that is native to a particular region

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• autochthones
  plural
• autochthons
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of autochthon

First recorded in 1640–50; from Greek autóchthōn “of the land itself,” equivalent to auto- auto- ¹ + chthṓn “the earth, land, ground”

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

autochthon autochthones autochthons

Had she been familiar with the Greek idea, she might have called him a Kentucky autochthon.

From The Reign of Law; a tale of the Kentucky hemp fields by James Lane Allen

Tchekoff is a true product of Russian literature, an autochthon plant, nourished by his natal sap.

From Contemporary Russian Novelists by Serge Persky

As a Jew he saw and judged the Danish character, and as a Dane he saw and judged the Jewish character with a liberality and insight of which no autochthon would have been capable.

From Essays on Scandinavian Literature by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

That the Mayas were a race autochthon on this western continent and did not receive their civilization from Asia or Africa, seems a rational conclusion, to be deduced from the foregoing FACTS.

From Vestiges of the Mayas or, Facts Tending to Prove that Communications and Intimate Relations Must Have Existed, in very Remote Times, Between the Inhabitants of Mayab and Those of Asia and Africa by Augustus Le Plongeon

He is earth-born, autochthon, and holds possession by descent.

From The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies by Sir Walter Besant

But now that there is evidence to indicate that the Terran Colony was an experiment, the planting of one Hainish Normal group on a world with its own proto-hominid autochthones, the possibility cannot be ignored.

From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin

The twenty May-poles which Cato proposed to plant in the hall stood already incarnate there as autochthones.

From Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Vol. II A Biography by Jean Paul

The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones of the soil.

From A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau

As a rule the European peoples regarded themselves in antiquity as autochthones if they did not look upon themselves as immigrants from regions within Europe to the territories they inhabited in historic times.

From Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 1 of 3 Gods and Goddesses of the Northland by Ph.D.

In some representations of him he is depicted as half snake, so that he was one of the autochthones, the earth-born ancestors of the Athenians.

From The New Gresham Encyclopedia Volume 4, Part 2: Ebert to Estremadura by Various

Lost to the familiar, Age moved us out of living memory, unlike those tribes, the autochthons who saw the earths infancy still.

From Unmanned by Stephen Oliver

But very little indeed is known about these supposed autochthons, except that they were very small in stature, and that this pigmy race receded and vanished before the advancing Ainu.

From An Introduction to the History of Japan by Katsuro Hara

In a foregoing chapter I stated that the Japanese, whatever ethnological interpretation be given to them, can hardly be considered as autochthons.

From An Introduction to the History of Japan by Katsuro Hara

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