mimic men

noun

Post-colonial people that, through lack of ready alternatives, imitate practices of the pre-independence colonising people, maybe inappropriately.

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Meanings

noun
  1. collectivePost-colonial people that, through lack of ready alternatives, imitate practices of the pre-independence colonising people, maybe inappropriately.

    It would also suggest that a ’mimic men’ attitude to addressing CO₂ capture and reuse, which first focusses on capturing low-purity flue-gas CO₂ emissions at the PLIE, would be probably misguided

    2023, Thérèse G. Lee Chan and David A. Janes, “Uncovering and Filtering Industrial Symbiosis Networks for Carbon Dioxide Utilization in Trinidad and Tobago”, in Carbon Capture Science & Technology, volume 7, number 100109, →Bibcode, →DOI, page 9
    2 more examples

    We pretended to be real, to be learning, to be preparing ourselves for life, we mimic men of the New World, one unknown corner of it, with all its reminders of the corruption that came so quickly to the new.

    1967, V.S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men, Paperback edition, London: Penguin, published 1969, →ISBN, page 146

    ...even though in Trinidad and Tobago the steel band and calypso have emerged, nevertheless artistic, community and individual values are not for the most part authentic but, to borrow the language of the economist, possess a high import content, the vehicles of import being the educational system, the mass media, the films, and the tourists. V. S. Naipaul’s description of West Indians as ‘mimic men’ is harsh, but true.

    1970, Eric Williams, “29 The Future of the Caribbean”, in From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean - 1492–1969, Vintage Books, published 1984, →ISBN, page 502
  2. pluralplural of mimic man

Origin

Coined by Trinidadian-British writer V. S. Naipaul in 1967 in his book The Mimic Men from mimic and men.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

mimic men. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mimic%20men

MLA

“mimic men.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mimic%20men. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “mimic men,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/mimic%20men.

Source: mimic men on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.