ethnologist

American  

[eth-nah-luhj-ist] / ɛθˈnɑ lədʒ ɪst /

noun

1. a person who studies ethnology.

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Explanation

A scientist who compares the way different human societies and cultures function is an ethnologist. An ethnologist is sometimes called a cultural anthropologist. An ethnologist is an anthropologist who specializes in studying data about the way different groups of people live, and then comparing and contrasting this information. By looking at the religious beliefs, languages, and social norms of various cultures, ethnologists can discover the things we all have in common. The ultimate goal of this work is to better understand humanity. The Greek root of ethnologist is ethnos, "people."

Example Sentences

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, German ethnologist Hans Himmelheber journeyed across Ivory Coast amassing a collection of ritual objects.

From Barron's • Jan. 16, 2026

Solares died in 1923 at 81, but left wax cylinder recordings of Chumash songs, stories and translations with linguist and Native American language ethnologist John Peabody Harrington.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 25, 2025

The French critic Serge Daney called him “an ethnologist of his own reality,” adding that Eustache gave a face to the “lost children” of May ’68: “Without him, nothing would have remained of them.”

From New York Times • Jun. 22, 2023

“New Year’s Eve is a culmination point for the tensions and all the divides in our society,” said Manuel Trummer, a comparative European ethnologist at the University of Regensburg.

From Washington Post • Dec. 30, 2022

Is there no field in the mighty past, for the philosopher and the historian? for the ethnologist and the antiquarian?

From An Address, Delivered Before the Was-ah Ho-de-no-son-ne or New Confederacy of the Iroquois Also, Genundewah, a Poem by Hosmer, William H. C. (William Howe Cuyler)