- a person who urges the promotion of the interests of inhabitants born in a country over those of immigrants: Nativists advocate a hard line against immigrants, but loud and aggressive efforts have proven to be an electoral bust.
- a person who advocates or engages in the preservation or revival of an Indigenous culture: Some nativists began urging fellow Mi’kmaq to pray to Gluskap, their traditional culture hero, instead of to the “foreign” Christ.
- a person who argues for the existence of ideas that are not learned but are part of the original constitution of the mind: Nativists emphasize genetics, biology, and innate mechanisms, while empiricists insist that babies are born into the world with no knowledge of it.
- a person who argues for the innateness hypothesis, that humans are born with a knowledge of certain universal elements of language structure that comes into play during first-language acquisition: The differences in language ability in subjects with Down syndrome may lie at the level of the brain’s microcircuitry, where nativists locate innate language knowledge.
- of, being, or relating to nativists or their views:Many countries have seen the emergence of angry nativist movements aimed at combating further immigration.
