Other forms: colonists
A colonist is somebody who settles in a newly claimed land. The first colonists.
The word carries the claim with it, which is why historians now choose it carefully. A colonist and a settler describe the same person from slightly different angles.
1nouncolonistSomebody who settles in a newly claimed land.
“The colonists arrived in autumn and half of them did not last the winter.”
colonist is a person.
Proto-Indo-European
*kʷel-
Latin
colōnia
Middle English
colane
English
colony
English, today
colonist
Built from
From colony + -ist. colony comes from Middle English colane, from Latin colōnia. From Middle English colane, colonye, from Latin colōnia (“colony”), from colōnus (“farmer; colonist”), from colō (“till, cultivate, worship”), from earlier *quelō, from Proto-Indo-European kʷel- (“to move; to turn (around)”). a doublet of Cologne and Colonia and Köln.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA