colonizer
a nation or government that claims a territory other than its own, forcibly taking control over the population and resources located in that territory and usually sending some of its own people to settle there: In the past, whole continents have been appropriated by colonizers such as Britain, Spain, France, and Portugal.
any of the settlers who come from such a nation to live in or help control the territory their government has claimed: The Red River was the scene of a major historic battle between European colonizers and Canada’s Indigenous people.
Often Disparaging and Offensive. a descendant of any of these settlers, or any person belonging to their culture and enjoying the advantages of the power structure set up by the colonizing nation.
a person who is among the first to settle in an area: The initial colonizers of the Arctic were thought to have descended from inhabitants of the forested south.
Biology. a species of plant or animal that moves or is transported to a new habitat and seeks to establish itself there: Ecologists are interested in why some species are successful colonizers while others are not.
Microbiology, Medicine/Medical. a microbe that multiplies in or on another organism, especially one that does so without causing disease or infection, such as certain bacteria in the gut or on the skin of humans.
Origin of colonizer
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use colonizer in a sentence
Colonial rhetoric was often virtuous: colonizers would bring civilization to benighted Africans.
Now, many Han Chinese view Tibetans as dangerous ingrates who have bitten the hand of their benevolent Chinese colonizers.
The Spanish were not only the first conquerors of the New World, and its first colonizers, but also its first civilizers.
The Spanish Pioneers | Charles F. LummisMin and I got to thinking of all those robot colonizers who'd be coming out here.
The Love of Frank Nineteen | David Carpenter KnightDutch merchants, Dutch fishermen, and Dutch colonizers made themselves felt as a force throughout the world.
The Book of Art for Young People | Agnes Conway
The other five were all D-class colonizers, built during the Expansion when large populations were moved.
The Misplaced Battleship | Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)Spanish historians add their testimony, and claim the Phoenicians as their principal colonizers.
An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 | Mary Frances Cusack
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