marginalized

adjective

mar·​gin·​al·​ized ˈmär-jə-nᵊl-ˌīzd 

ˈmärj-nə-ˌlīzd

: having marginal social or political status : relegated to an unimportant or powerless position within a society or group

Refugees are the world's quintessentially marginalized population: They are by definition located at the edge, beyond boundaries, on the outside.

—Tamar Mayer

… the domination and oppression of women and other marginalized groups within patriarchal culture.

—Susan M. Squier

Did you know?

Marginalized Writing vs. Marginalized People

Marginalize provides a striking case of how thoroughly the figurative use of a word can take over the literal one. The original (and now obsolete) meaning of this word, “to write notes in the margin of,” is analogous to the still-familiar noun marginalia, “marginal notes or embellishments." A margin is, of course, the blank space surrounding the text in a book. Just prior to 1970, marginalize took on the sense that is most commonly encountered today, “to relegate to an unimportant or powerless position” (that is, to the metaphorical margins of society). This use of the verb can be found as far back as 1968; an article in The Los Angeles Times from June 20th of that year reports, “[T]he Negro was kept aside, marginalized, thus composing in its large majority the chronically poor.” In its newer sense, marginalize has assumed a much more prominent place in the vocabulary than it once had.

Examples of marginalized in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The proliferation of identity acronyms and employee resource groups for marginalized communities cannot explain the bias in coverage. —Jay Caspian Kang, The New Yorker, 18 Oct. 2024

This interpretation threatens to undermine decades of civil rights progress and limits the EPA’s capacity to enforce protections for marginalized communities facing disproportionate environmental harm. —Monica Sanders, Forbes, 16 Oct. 2024

Sadly, many important artists of color and those from marginalized communities remained relatively unknown during their lifetime. —Pamela J. Joyner, ARTnews.com, 14 Oct. 2024

Image In this moving departure from her Cash Blackbear series, Rendon shows how harm done to a marginalized community can reverberate through generations, and how collective altruism can be at odds with the needs of home and family. —Sarah Weinman, New York Times, 4 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1969, in the meaning defined above