Other forms: discriminated, discriminating, discriminates
To discriminate is to treat people unfairly because of their group. Discriminate against, refuse to discriminate, laws that discriminate.
This is now much the commonest sense and it is always negative, usually with against — to discriminate against somebody on grounds of race, sex, age or disability is unlawful in most countries. The older neutral sense is to tell fine things apart.
1verbdiscriminateTo treat people unfairly because of their group.
“It is illegal for employers to discriminate against older workers.”
2verbapartTo tell one thing apart from another.
“Some colour-blind people can't discriminate between red and green.”
discriminate is a treating unfairly.
Latin discriminare means to divide or distinguish, from discrimen, a dividing line, from discernere, to separate.
Proto-Indo-European
*krey-
Latin
discrīminātus
English, today
discriminate
Built from
1615; Latin discrīminātus, perfect passive participle of discrīminō (“to divide, separate, distinguish”) (see -ate and -ate), from discrīmen (“a space between, division, separation, distinction”), from discernō (“to divide, separate, distinguish, discern”). by surface analysis, dis- + criminate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA