(ĕthˈnĭk)
adjectivea. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a sizable group of people sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.
b. Being a member of a particular ethnic group, especially belonging to a national group by heritage or culture but residing outside its national boundaries: ethnic Hungarians living in northern Serbia.
- Relating to a people not Christian or Jewish.
noun A member of a particular ethnic group, especially one who maintains the language or customs of the group.
Word History: When it is said in a Middle English text written before 1400 that a part of a temple fell down and “mad a gret distruccione of ethnykis,” one wonders why ethnics were singled out for death. The word
ethnic in this context, however, means “gentile,” coming as it does from the Greek adjective
ethnikos, meaning “national, foreign, gentile.” The adjective is derived from the noun
ethnos, “people, nation, foreign people,” that in the plural phrase
ta ethnē meant “foreign nations.” In translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, this phrase was used for Hebrew
gōyīm, “gentiles”; hence the sense of the noun in the Middle English quotation. The noun
ethnic in this sense or the related sense “heathen” is not recorded after 1728, although the related adjective sense is still used. But probably under the influence of other words going back to Greek
ethnos, such as
ethnography and
ethnology, the adjective
ethnic broadened in meaning in the 19th century. After this broadening the noun sense “a member of a particular ethnic group,” first recorded in 1945, came into existence.
