- 1原住民的；土生土長的、原生的。談人時台灣用「原住民」；中國大陸也用「土著」，在台灣聽來較不尊重。
If people, plants, or animals are indigenous, they belong to that place from the start. Nobody brought them there later. Indigenous people were already home; an indigenous plant grew there on its own, not in a garden pack from somewhere else. We say it of plants, animals, languages, and peoples. In careful English today, Indigenous is often written with a capital I when we mean the peoples, as a mark of respect — more like a name than a plain describing word. It is a formal word. In everyday talk people also say native, though native is looser and can sound awkward about people. You will meet indigenous in news, school, and law. Though actually, “always been there” is tidier than real history. Groups move. The point of the word is: they were not planted there by later or by a ship. And despite the look of it, this word has nothing to do with Indian.
indigenous 指人、植物或動物從一開始就屬於那個地方，不是後來才被帶進去的。它可以用在動植物、語言和族群上，畫面是原本就在那裡，而不是從別處移植或帶過去的。談到人的時候，當代英文常把首字母寫成大寫，表示尊重，這時它更像一個專有名稱。它是比較正式的字，在新聞、學校和法律裡常見；日常說話人們常用「native」，不過它的範圍比較寬，談人時可能聽起來不太自然。實際歷史也比「一直都在那裡」複雜，因為人群會遷徙。
組成Borrowed from Late Latin indigenus (“native, born in a country”): indi- / indu- (an old form of in, “in”) + gen- (the root of Latin gignō, “give birth to”) + English -ous. Not related to Indian.
同家族的字
- indigenesame Latin: a native person (rare now)
- endogenousa separately formed doublet from the same “born inside” pieces, mostly in science
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
indigenousadj/ɪnˈdɪdʒɪnəs/
- 1
Native to a land, especially before colonization.
- The Aboriginals were indigenous to Victoria before the World War.
- Not only the Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores.
- 2
Native to a land, especially before colonization.
- The Ainu are the indigenous ethnic group of Japan's Hokkaido Island.
- About 98 per cent of Taiwan's inhabitants are Han Chinese, a diverse mix of ethnic and linguistic groups, including Hakka, Cantonese and Fujianese, who came from China's southern coast. Taiwan's other two per cent are from one of the nine indigenous tribes, which are scattered throughout the island but largely concentrated along the east coast and in the Central Mountain Range.
- 3
Innate, inborn.
- She was a native and essential cook, as much as Aunt Chloe,—cooking being an indigenous talent of the African race.
- He had all the tricks of a newspaper boy indigenous in him.
- 4
Original to a geographical area.
- That style of pottery is indigenous to that region.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。