What does "tokenistic" mean?

Serving as a token of support, compliance, etc., but lacking substance; exhibiting or relating to tokenism.

What is a synonym for "tokenistic"?

Common synonyms include: symbolic.

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Adjective

1
Serving as a token of support, compliance, etc., but lacking substance; exhibiting or relating to tokenism.
"The government has taken nothing more than tokenistic actions on behalf of people with disabilities."
2
Constituting a token or symbol. obsolete
"1908, T. W. Pearce, “The Ancient Faiths of the Chinese” in Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China, London: Lloyd’s Greater Britain Publishing Company, p. 340, Animals are tokens. Among tokenistic animals the dragon holds the first place. The dragon of the sky is indissolubly linked in the minds of the masses with the emperor who sits on the dragon throne, and who, after death, ascends upon the dragon “to be a guest on high.”"

"The government has taken nothing more than tokenistic actions on behalf of people with disabilities."

From token + -istic.

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