non-native

adjective

non-na·​tive ˌnän-ˈnā-tiv 

variants or nonnative

: not native: such as

a

of a plant or animal : living or growing in a place that is not the location of its natural occurrence

a non-native fish species

… overgrazing causes grasslands to give way to sagebrush, mesquite and non-native exotic grasses, environmentalists contend.

—Doug McInnis

b

: not born or raised in the place where a particular language is spoken

non-native inhabitants

a nonnative speaker of English [=a person who speaks English but whose native language is not English]

non-native noun

or nonnative

plural non-natives or nonnatives

popular among both natives and non-natives

Synonyms

• alien
• foreign

Examples of non-native in a Sentence

nonnative customs that made the recent immigrants stand out in their new country

Recent Examples on the Web

That's the number of aquatic non-native species that have made their way into the Great Lakes as of 2023 – at least the ones that scientists have identified. —Caitlin Looby, Journal Sentinel, 12 Sep. 2024

The trees provide considerably more shade, cooling and carbon-sucking benefits than the non-native palms that came before them. —Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times, 9 Sep. 2024

Big-leaf lupines, Katherine Brewer, a curator of living collections at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens tells me, are a non-native species. —Anna Holmes, The New Yorker, 8 Sep. 2024

On the hot-button issue of natives versus non-natives, Lauter comes down on the side of romance and freedom of expression. —Mayer Rus, Architectural Digest, 6 Sep. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1845, in the meaning defined above