h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The term "the human race" certainly means the whole of the species Homo Sapiens. I haven't time to check how old this usage is at the moment.

"I haven't time to check how old this usage is at the moment."

To narrow your search slightly:

in the early 50's, my father looked out at the leaden sky and very heavy rain
"It's not a very nice day for the race."
"Race? What race?"
"The Human Race!" (laughed uproariously)

Oh the humanity indeed! I suspect we'll find the use of race to include all homo sapiens will ultimately prove beneficial to our real tolerance of each other. But I'm getting ahead of myself, and most of the world. In a more meaninful time frame, perhaps we'll also discover (by someone confirming here) that it comes from those heady Victorian days when the wonders of the world were being exploited and promoted.

The Darwin argument was in full flight, PT Barnum was featuring pygmies and eskimoes and giants and dwarfs, the Museums of Europe and America were stealing Egypt, and the Audobon and National Geographic were showing slides of things up the Wazoo and other exotic rivers.

Oh, yeah, the emanciaption acts were passed in that century too and there was much ado about equalising our respect and attitude for the other races.

So I will go so far as to wager that it was first used in the pulpit. (I'll withold my suspicions about the clerical denomination and nation of origin.) In a Sunday Sermon such rhetoric would have a double-edged intention, expressing harmony between men in the face of challenges from Post Darwin monkies.

That is to say, sadly, that by acknowledging that all men were indeed men (ie: one race), one could then draw a firm new line and say, No more! No apes and no monkies. Men only! And thereby, create a politically united front against the theories of evolution and the hideous consequences of inter-species relations.

peace
~jwf~

Just wanted to know why we say 'cop out' when someone 'chickens' (there's another one) out of doing something.

Kaeori has started a thread on my page about the Index to this thread. So far we have indexed Postings 1-140 and 4001-4200. If you want to discuss it or help in the work, hop on over to F52852?thread=196649

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In the search for the phrase "Human Race", I thought I had struck gold when I found a book published in 1780 called "The Education of the Human Race". But it turns out that it was originally in German: "Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts". So the term "Human Race" in the title might be a modern translation. Does anybody know exactly what Menschengeschlechts means and what it meant in 1780? I know Menschen is people or humans. But Babelfish translates geschlecht as "sex" which doesn't seem right. I'm hoping that if the Germans used the term to mean race as in black/white/coloured etc. and also used it to mean the entire of humanity, then it is likely that the English did too.

"I wish I loved the human race
I wish I loved its silly face" - has swum up from my subconscious, unattributed, but definitely not original.
I think that "rat race" - also 1950s - was coined as an analogy on that, "race" alone I can get back to C16.
"Cop" meaning to capture is C18 French "caper" to seize (it says here)Hence, 'cop it' = catch it; by extension 'cop out' = to avoid being copped, and now to avoid a responsibility.
I don't feel it's the same as "bottle out", which implies not doing something because you're afraid - never afraid to stick her neck out

I didn't intend the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, for which I thought I was using the accepted abbreviations, to link to anything - sorry. You have to be three jumpas ahead of yourself all the time these days.

Peter Singer came up with the term 'speciesism' to describe prejudice towards other species, or rather, failure to consider their interests equally, or at all, as is usually the case.

Nothing like a mention of 'sex' to get me google eyed
"Yes," I clicked, "please, do 'translate this page'!"

And Mister Google said:

"To the "fragments" Lessing let its "education of the menschengeschlechts" (completely only 1780) print, which makes the attempt to determine the relationship of revealing and reason again.
Which the education is with individual humans, revealing is with the whole people sex.

Education is revealing, which happens individual humans: and revealing is education, which happened the menschengeschlecht and still happens.

Whether the education from this criteria to regard, in which Paedagogik can have use I do not want to examine here. But in theology it can certainly very large use have and many difficulties lift, if one understands oneself revealing as an education of the menschengeschlechts."

And sadly I'm none the wiser. But at least we know that, like Goethe's 'Sorrows of Young Wurther', it's in the ballpark between the Age of Reason and the Romantic Movement so it's easier to understand that sex would inevitably rear its ugly head as one of the basics of the back to 'nature' movement (which would give rise to Byron, Shelley, Keats and Frankenstein).


~jwf~

I thought it was Chesterton, but it's not:

"I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!"
Walter Raleigh, (1861 - 1922)

In the 16th century, Sir Philip Sidney began a translation of the Book of Psalms which was completed by his sister, Mary Herbert. One of them produced psalm 21 v.10:
"From among the humane race [thou shalt] Roote out their generation."

Concise Oxford E.D.

Have you done 'umbrage'?

I've had a look around and it appears to have meanings related to shade, and comes from the latin for shade. So how did its use meaning 'offence' come about? As in 'no need to take umbrage at that'.

Just idle curiosity!

I presume it is from "a shadow of rage came across his face".

I think the association with black moods and so forth is just a happy coincidence which made it easier for the term to become accepted. However, the Latin root is umbraticum, which is an adjectival form of the word for seclusion, so when someone takes umbrage at you, you're getting the silent treatment.

Seems to have come into English from C 14 French. It still has the same 2 meanings in French also, but they can a) take umbrage at something or someone b) carry umbrage to someone or from someone as well as causing or giving umbrage to someone

At last night's rehearsal, the lady playing Miss Prism stumbled over the word bassinette. She had actually never heard it before.
So how many of you have ever used the word, and do you know what distinguishes it from a perambulator?
(I know, of course. I was just wondering if anyone younger than me knows)

Americans use the term bassinet for those plastic basins that they put babies in in maternity hospitals. I had always assumed that it was "basin-ette", but apparently it comes from a corruption of the French place name Barceloneette (which is in the southern Alps). My dictionary says that it can mean a wickerwork or plastic baby's bed or a perambulator.

Nope, never heard of it. Well, I have now, although my first thought on seeing it was that it was a strange spelling (I'd never accuse Wand'rin Star or Gnomon of spelling mistakes!) of the medieval helmet.
Is it pronounced the same?

Thanks for the info on umbrage. It's a strange looking word isn't it? I guess it's the umb- that looks odd, not a very common start to a word! Nice that it's meaning seems to be derived somewhat poetically.

Another -rage, so many people (such as Peter Tatchell) will have you believe, is outrage. Quite logically, people think it comes from out + rage. But no, it's actually from Old French outre (beyond) + -age. This is an example of folk etymology that actually alters the internal morphology of the word... and no, I can't think of any others. Can anyone help?