What does "tokenism" mean?

A policy of formally complying with efforts to achieve a goal by making small, token gestures; especially to hire a minimal number of ethnically diverse or disadvantaged people.

Tokenism

Q: What is a synonym for "tokenism"?

Common synonyms include: cant, empty gesture, false piety, hypocrisy, hypocriticalness, lip service.

noun

noun ·4 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A policy of formally complying with efforts to achieve a goal by making small, token gestures; especially to hire a minimal number of ethnically diverse or disadvantaged people. countable, uncountable
"We know the prime minister regards environmental matters as mere tokenism. But we at least expected his ritual once-a-year speech on the issue."

Synonyms

All synonyms

cant empty gesture false piety hypocrisy hypocriticalness lip service

Example

More examples

"We know the prime minister regards environmental matters as mere tokenism. But we at least expected his ritual once-a-year speech on the issue."

Etymology

From token + -ism.

Related phrases

magical negro

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.