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

And Bob Mathews is someone who presented all these things to disenfranchised and lonely people. —Anne Thompson, IndieWire, 24 Dec. 2024

The argument that somehow voters in more populous states are disenfranchised is also a fallacy. —Joe Battenfeld, Boston Herald, 19 Dec. 2024

The Syrian people had been so terrorized and disenfranchised, so thoroughly cut off from their missing relatives, that they were reduced to a kind of ad-hoc forensic anthropology. —Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker, 11 Dec. 2024

Leaders in the sovereignty movement should focus on creating a unified front that connects with disenfranchised voters. —Javier A Hernandez, Orlando Sentinel, 20 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1818, in the meaning defined above