Meaning of go native | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To adopt the lifestyle or outlook of local inhabitants, especially when dwelling in a colonial region.
   idiomatic
2. Of a contractor or consultant, to begin working directly as an employee for a company and cease to work through a contracting firm or agency.
   idiomatic

Examples

“[…]for St. Xavier's looks down on boys who ‘go native all-together.’ One must never forget⟳ that one is a Sahib, and that some day, when examinations are passed, one will command natives.”

“He was an extraordinary figure⟳, with his red beard and matted hair, and his great hairy chest. His feet were horny and scarred, so that I knew he went always bare foot. He had gone native with a vengeance.”

“Yet while Gauguin went native, taking teenage mistresses, wearing local costumes and building his own⟳ wooden hut, his ultimate purpose was to impress⟳ the art world back home.”

“In the case of diplomats, the State Department has had to wrestle⟳ with criticisms that regional specialists—say⟳, those who concentrate on the Arab world and speak⟳ Arabic—will suffer⟳ from “clientitis”: the disease of “going native,” of developing such sympathy for the people and culture of a given region that one begins to represent⟳ its interest⟳ to America rather than vice versa.”

“Although I have⟳ tried to avoid⟳ bias, I may have⟳ failed. For example, I may have⟳ "gone native," a visitor seduced by the charms of a new exotic world.”

“[…] we had to stop⟳ putting job-hunting colonels in charge of AFPRO detachments in the plants. It almost always happened that they went native and began to represent⟳ the contractor rather than the government.”

CEFR level