disenfranchised

adjective

dis·​en·​fran·​chised ˌdis-in-ˈfran-ˌchīzd 

: deprived of some right, privilege, or immunity

Tough, resourceful, and determined to help her disenfranchised and disenchanted students learn how to learn and love it, Johnson employs a barrage of techniques.

—Donna Seaman

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill does what it can, but the millions of mentally ill remain the least supported, the most disenfranchised, and the most excluded people in our society today.

—Oliver Sacks

especially : deprived of the right to vote

The value of the right to vote, however, given the reality of racial voting patterns, will depend on whether it translates into political power and influence for the previously disenfranchised minority.

—Alan Freeman

Examples of disenfranchised in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Toward the end of the 1880s, strikes broke out across the United States, and disenfranchised laborers regrouped and reorganized labor and communities. —Faron Levesque, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 May 2024

Tucked beside railroad tracks that course through gnarly woods, the encampment harbors the disenfranchised and distrusting, the addicted and the unwell, the vulnerable and the predatory. —Photographs Todd Heisler, New York Times, 19 May 2024

High-profile cases of Black women who have experienced pregnancy complications or death show that disparities afflict not just the poor and disenfranchised, Blount said. —Ken Alltucker, USA TODAY, 2 May 2024

Shonda Rhimes was honored at Variety’s Power of Women, presented by Lifetime, in New York on Thursday for her work with the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, a non-profit dance school that offers classes to disenfranchised communities. —Jack Dunn, Variety, 2 May 2024

The people most at risk are disenfranchised communities, including young people and people of color. —Stephanie Innes, The Arizona Republic, 16 Apr. 2024

King’s Running Man, published in 1982 and written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, was set in 2025 in an America under a totalitarian regime that uses violent game shows to placate the disenfranchised masses. —Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter, 11 Apr. 2024

However, between primal screams and dance floor disassociation, flourishing streetwise narratives have come to epitomize the disenfranchised emotions of a generation. —Richard Villegas, Rolling Stone, 1 Apr. 2024

The challenge of finding workers is further complicated in rural and disenfranchised communities, with those who stand to gain the most from climate action often the least able to enact change. —Jeff Sprau, Forbes, 29 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1818, in the meaning defined above