Friday, October 14, 2005
What’s in a Word
The Oxford English dictionary defines the word ethnic as “pertaining to race.” In other words, something that is ethnic is of a certain racial background, but the word has not always meant this. The word is originally from a Greek word that meant the “nations.” In the Bible this word was used to refer to the non-Jewish nations of the world also known as the gentiles. When the barbarian Goths who helped bring about the fall of Rome were converted to Christianity, they adopted this word to refer to other peoples or nations that did not follow either Judaism or Christianity, a definition that was similar to our modern word heathen. In fact, it was once commonly believed by linguists that heathen was a corrupted form of ethnic, this however has sense been discovered to not be the case as heathen more likely has it’s roots in the Germanic tongues. This confusion, however, led to an unusual spelling for the word ethnic as hethnic. Up until about the late 19th century the words ethnic and heathen had about the same meaning however, in the 1800’s people again started to use the word ethnic to refer to something pertaining to a nation or race. Over time, the definition for ethnic as someone who is heathen faded away, and thus the word ethnic came full circle back to it’s original and current meaning.