Etymology

From native +‎ bornCategory:English compound terms#NATIVEBORN.

Adjective

native-born (not comparable)Category:English lemmas#NATIVEBORNCategory:English adjectives#NATIVEBORNCategory:English uncomparable adjectives#NATIVEBORNCategory:English multiword terms#NATIVEBORNCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#NATIVEBORNCategory:Pages with entries#NATIVE-BORNCategory:Pages with 1 entry#NATIVE-BORN

1. Being a native and inhabitant of the same place; living where one was born.
   • 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 384:

     Our conversation was entirely in Malay, as that is the official language here, and in fact the mother-tongue and only language of the controlleur, who is a native-born half-breed.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NATIVEBORN

   • 1958 July, J. P. Wilson, “Scottish Soliloquy”, in Railway Magazine, page 495:

     The native-born and the "naturalised" locomotives have been giving way to the standardised types, of which the L.M.S.R. class "5" 4-6-0 has led the way and has penetrated the furthest.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NATIVEBORN

2. Born in the country of citizenship.
   • 2025 July 25, Matt Egan, “How Trump’s mass deportations could backfire on the American economy by shrinking paychecks”, in CNN Business‎:

     “There are a lot of jobs in the US that native-born people don’t want – and foreign-born people are happy to have,” said Stephanie Roth, chief economist at Wolfe Research.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NATIVEBORN

Noun

native-born (plural native-borns)Category:English lemmas#NATIVEBORNCategory:English nouns#NATIVEBORNCategory:English countable nouns#NATIVEBORNCategory:English multiword terms#NATIVEBORNCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#NATIVEBORNCategory:Pages with entries#NATIVE-BORNCategory:Pages with 1 entry#NATIVE-BORN

1. A person who was born in the country of their citizenship.
2. A person who was born as a citizen of a specified country.

See also

• natural-born

References

• “native-born”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.