Noun

The characteristics of a society, city etc. which has many different ethnic or national cultures mingling freely; political or social policies which support or encourage such coexistence.

* 1991 , Barbara Ehrenreich, Time , 8 Apr 1991:

Something had to replace the threat of communism, and at last a workable substitute is at hand. "Multiculturalism ," as the new menace is known, has been denounced in the media recently as the new McCarthyism, the new fundamentalism, even the new totalitarianism -- take your choice.

* 2005 , David Davis MP, Daily Telegraph , 3 Aug 2005:

Britain has pursued a policy of multiculturalism - allowing people of different cultures to settle without expecting them to integrate into society.

* 2011 , "On a mat and a prayer", The Economist , 7 Apr 2011:

Earlier this year he said multiculturalism had “failed”, that immigrants needed to “melt” into French society, and that “we do not want ostentatious prayers in the street in France.”

Noun

(dated) The state of being feminine.

A social theory or political movement arguing that legal and social restrictions on females must be removed in order to bring about equality of both sexes in all aspects of public and private life.

* {{quote-magazine

, date = 1926-11-27 , title = The Talk of the Town , magazine = The New Yorker , issn = 0028-792X , page = 17 , passage = Women are still forbidden to smoke there... Ardent though we are in feminism , we applaud this stand... }}

* {{quote-book

, year = 1996 , author = Jan Jindy Pettman , title = Worlding Women: A feminist international politics , pages = ix-x , passage = There are by now many feminisms' (Tong, 1989; Humm, 1992). Alongside and often overlapping with older-identified distinctions between liberal, socialist, radical and cultural '''feminisms''', for example (important as they are in their different accounts of sexual difference and gender power), are variously named black, third-world ethnic-minority ' feminisms , themselves far from homogenous. }}