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anti-Semitic

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: antisemitic

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From anti- +‎ Semitic; calque of German antisemitisch, which was first used in 1860 by Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider.[1]

For more see anti-Semitism.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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anti-Semitic (comparative more anti-Semitic, superlative most anti-Semitic)

  1. Relating to or exhibiting anti-Semitism.
    • 2014 August 20, “Why Jews are worried [print version: International New York Times, 22 August 2014, page 8]”, in The New York Times‎[2]:
      [W]hen a Hamas spokesman recently stood by his statement that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children for their matzos – one of the oldest anti-Semitic canards around – European elites were largely silent.
    • 2022 November 19, Clarence Page, “Sometimes offensive comedy is just lazy laughs”, in Chicago Tribune‎[3]:
      The Anti-Defamation League reported a dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents in 2021 in this country, with a total of 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism reported to ADL, the highest number on record since the organization began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.

Usage notes

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  • Though Semitic refers in a broader sense to all those who speak Semitic languages (including e.g. Arabs and Assyrians), the term anti-Semitism has historically referred to prejudice against Jews alone. To avoid the confusion of the misnomer, many scholars of the subject (such as Emil Fackenheim) now favor the unhyphenated antisemitic in order to emphasize that the word should be read as a single unified term, not as a meaningful root word–prefix combination.[2][3][4] (See Wikipedia's article on the etymology and usage of the term.) Use of the term to refer to prejudice against any Semitic people is rare and nonstandard, occurring chiefly in anti-Israel discourse.

Hypernyms

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Coordinate terms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ Falk, Avner (2008) Anti-Semitism: a History and Psychoanalysis of Contemporary Hatred, Westport, CT: Praeger, →ISBN
  2. ^ “Antisemitism. The Power of Myth (Facing History), Defining Antisemitism page 2 (PDF page 5)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)‎[1], 2007 August 2 (last accessed), archived from the original on 7 August 2007
  3. ^ “…the spelling ought to be antisemitism without the hyphen, dispelling the notion that there is an entity 'Semitism' which 'anti-Semitism' opposes.” -- Emil Fackenheim, Post-Holocaust Anti-Jewishness, Jewish Identity and the Centrality of Israel, in World Jewry and the State of Israel. ed. Moshe David, p11, n2.
  4. ^ “Antisemitism is not a scientific word, and it is entitled to neither a hyphen nor a capital.” Dr. James Parkes, 1953, quoted in Holocaust Almanac: David Irving's Hitler: Postscript
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