Indigenous

[Donald M. Lance]

Mike Salovesh wrote:

> If the currently P.C. English "indigenous" actually was a borrowing from
> Spanish,

The word 'indigenous' seems so much like one of those Latinate encroachments on our
"indigenous" English language that I would have been surprised to find that we borrowed it
from Latin American usage.  Who would the borrowers have been?  The small group of USians
who actually read anything in Spanish during the time when Spanish was not considered
appropriate as a research language for a Ph.D. degree ("no important literature in
Spanish")?
M-W10 (1993) dates this word back to 1646.  Maybe some of the lexicographers on ADS-L will
know of earlier citations.
DMLance