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Ethnic   Listen
noun
Ethnic  n.  
1.
A heathen; a pagan. (Obs.) "No better reported than impure ethnic and lay dogs."
2.
A member of an ethnic group.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ethnic" Quotes from Famous Books



... eastern half of the southern coast; and Professors Haddon and Seligmann have decided that in eastern New Guinea many Proto-Polynesian, Melanesian and Malayan immigrants have mingled their blood with that of the more primitive Papuans. Thus there are many complexly associated ethnic elements in New Guinea, and often people living less than a hundred miles apart can not understand one another; in fact, each village has its peculiar dialect. Social customs and cultural standards in art and manufacture vary greatly from the same cause, and each ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... only rule of the association was that no man should talk long upon any matter, Floud, the fiery and aggressive little Baptist, hereupon savagely reviewed a late treatise on the ethnic Trinities, put out by a professor of ecclesiastical history in a New England theological seminary. Floud marvelled that this author could retain his orthodox standing, for he viewed the Bible as a purely human collection of imperfect writings, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... opened to the student for the collection and arrangement of details, before the true meaning of many a strange custom and stranger tale will be thoroughly understood. I have tried to do something of the kind in the foregoing pages. But beyond this there is the more delicate investigation of the ethnic element in folklore. Can we assign to the various races their special shares in the development of a common tradition? Can we show what direction each race took, and how and why it ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... Castration, results of Celery as an aphrodisiac Children, attracted to foot to scatology to copulation of animals to hair food impulses of Chinese, foot-fetichism of Circulatory conditions during coitus during pregnancy Clitoris Clothes, erotic fascination of Coitus, the phenomena of the methods of ethnic variations in methods of respiratory and circulatory conditions during interruptus as a cause of vasomotor disturbance glandular activity during motor activity during psychic state during serious effects of Congenital element in erotic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... was not merely a successful soldier but something of a fanatic with a belief in his divine mission, founded a kingdom in the western Ghats and, like the Sikh leaders, almost created a nation, for it does not appear that before his time the word Maratha (Maharashtra) had any special ethnic significance. After half a century the power of his successors passed into the hands of their Brahman ministers, known as Peshwas, who became the heads of a confederacy of Maratha chiefs, including the Rajas of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... his experience. But the forms and accompaniments of the doctrine, the immense diversity of dress and colors it appears in, are subject to all the laws and accidents that mould and clothe the products within any other department of thought and literature. We must refer the ethnic conceptions of a future state to the same sources to which other portions of poetry and philosophy are referred, namely, to the action of sentiment, fancy, and reason, first; then to the further action, reaction, and interaction of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... usher had re-entered after having carried off the plate,) "get into the ante-chamber wi' your lang lugs.—In conscience, Geordie, I think as that thou hast been mine ain auld fiduciary, and wert my goldsmith when I might say with the Ethnic poet—Non mea renidet in domo lacunar—for, faith, they had pillaged my mither's auld house sae, that beechen bickers, and treen trenchers, and latten platters, were whiles the best at our board, and glad we were of something to put on them, without quarrelling with the metal ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... is man's proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use. No good Christian or ethnic, if he be honest, can miss it; no statesman or patriot should. For without truth all the actions of mankind are craft, malice, or what you will, rather than wisdom. Homer says he hates him worse than hell-mouth that utters ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... was the duty of the women of the house to set food before him. An omission to do this would have been a discourtesy amounting to an affront. If hungry, he ate, if not hungry, courtesy required that he should taste the food and thank the giver. It is seen to have been a usage running through three ethnic conditions of the Indian race, becoming stronger as the means of subsistence increased in variety and amount, and attaining its highest development among the Village Indians in the Middle Status of barbarism. It was an active, well-established custom of Indian society, practiced among themselves ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... setting and motive. "The Island Nights' Entertainments" is as good in its way as the earlier "New Arabian Nights"—far superior to it, indeed, for finesse and the deft command of exotic material. Judged as art, "The Bottle Imp" and "The Beach of Falesa" are among the triumphs of ethnic interpretation, let alone their more external charms of story. And another masterpiece of foreign setting, "A Lodging for The Night," is further proof of Stevenson's ability to use other than Scotch motives for the materials of his art. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... Richelieu, in whom the forces of that great age were incarnate, was different. The ideas of citizenship, of the building up of a great nation, of the centralisation of forces, of collective action, of ethnic unity of purpose, came before the world. It was inevitable that they should have done so, and Lady Dilke, with her keen historic sense and her wonderful power of grouping facts, has told us the story of their struggle ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... whether the Aryans, when they broke up their pro-ethnic community, carried away with them, not only their common grammar and dictionary, but likewise some myths and legends which we find that Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, Slaves, when ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... values underlying important personal, social, and national questions raised in our society by its multiple links to and increasing dependence on technology, and by the diverse heritage of our many regions and ethnic groups. The humanities cast light on the broad issue of the role in a society of men and women of imagination and energy—those individuals who through their own example define "the spirit of the age," and in so doing move nations. Our Government's support for the humanities, within the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... settlement of territorial rights and of the sovereignty to be exercised over particular regions there are several factors which require consideration. International boundaries may be drawn along ethnic, economic, geographic, historic, or strategic lines. One or all of these elements may influence the decision, but whatever argument may be urged in favor of any one of these factors, the chief object in the determination of the sovereignty to be exercised within a certain territory ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... find preserved in the legends of the Indians an accurate and unmistakable description of the Japanese dragon (which is mainly Chinese in origin). Even Spinden, who "does not care to dignify by refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic connections between Central America" [and in fact America as a whole] "and the Old World," makes the following statement (in the course of a discussion of the myths relating to horned snakes in California): "a similar monster, possessing antlers, and ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... heathen conception. "Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of the soul?" was the cry of the King of Moab, and it marks the lowest depth into which the pagan idea of sacrifice had sunk. It is a genuine instance of deterioration in ethnic religion. The primitive view was far loftier ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... of his keeping his handkerchief wound round his hand, nor of his attempts to recur to the subject of his mortifying adventure. When they were again quite alone, the cook's respect having been won back through his ethnic susceptibility to silver, she remembered that she must go to ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... as in the Golden Age, inarticulate masses. They are a totality of more or less active personalities connected by common interests, in part by racial origin, and by a certain similarity of fundamental psychic traits. A people is a kind of collective personality possessing particular ethnic and psychological characteristics, animated by common political aspirations and political traditions. The progress of peoples, their civilization, and their culture naturally are determined by the advancement of the personalities which compose them. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... deer is a moot question, but it is a habit of the brute. For so many hundreds of years have we been at it, that we can hardly be expected to reform immediately. Undoubtedly, it is a sign of undeveloped ethnic consciousness. We are depraved animals. I must admit that there are quite a number of things men do that mark them as far below the angels, but in a way I am glad of it. The thrill and glow of nature is strong within us. The great primitive outer ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... their parents. I know no other way of explaining the fact that in all ages the majority of the people have had faith in some kind of a deity; and that, widely as they differ as to what is right, all feel that they should follow their convictions of duty. The various ethnic religions, however repulsive, cruel, and vile some of their teachings may be, all indicate a realization of dependence, and all, in some way, bear witness to man's longing for God. Augustine was right—"The heart is restless until ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... efforts expended in this direction, since it is asserted that the human voice is incapable of articulating more than twenty distinct sounds, therefore whatever resemblances there may be in the particular words of different languages are of no ethnic value. Although these may be the views of many persons not only in regard to the Eskimo tongue but in regard to philology in general, the matter has a wonderful fascination for more ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... been so prolific in religious thought or has founded faiths which have commanded the allegiance of so large a portion of the human race. While the Aryans of the West have been content to borrow their faith from the Hebrews; Indo-Aryans have produced the most wonderful and mighty ethnic religion (Brahmanism) and also one of the three great missionary religions of the world (Buddhism). A third of the human race today cling with devotion to these two products of the fertility of the mind, and the spirituality of ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... view of the general and reciprocal influences of ethnic myths; as respects the historic results of mythologies, we shall see that if every race evolved its sphere of myth in accordance with the canons laid down by us, their effect upon each other would work together for a common ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... type, made of stone slabs. If the evidence shows that this variety is found only in certain districts, pertains to a certain class of works, and is usually accompanied by certain types of art, we are warranted in using it as an ethnic characteristic, or as indicating the presence of particular tribes. If it can be shown that graves of this form are found in mounds attributed to the so- called mound-builders, and that certain tribes of Indians of historic ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas

... isolated region whose early inhabitants, of whatsoever national strain, were strongly inclined to secession or revolt against the older Eastern communities. Never was a nation composed of more diverse ethnic groups and elements. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... conceptions which he erroneously supposed to be old German. We hear of ancient bards inhabiting the German forests, singing 'lawless songs' of intense emotion, and deriving their inspiration from ethnic tradition and from the elemental feelings of love and friendship. In his so-called Bardiete he used the dramatic form for this same idealization of the ancient Germans. Although now little read, Klopstock exerted ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... traits are to which I refer as making up ethnic character. The answer cannot be so precise as you would like. We are dealing with a natural phenomenon, and Nature, as Goethe once remarked, never makes groups, but only individuals. The group is a subjective category of our own minds. ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton

... when we reach the date of the first known contact between Assyria and any people settled in western Asia Minor. But meanwhile, let it be borne in mind that their royal name Mita does not necessarily imply a connection between the Mushki and Phrygia; for since the ethnic "Mitanni" of north Mesopotamia means "Mita's men," that name must have long been domiciled much ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... overboard all your old dogmas," she went on with unruffled face, "you'd better go to work to get a new set. I've just heard of some sort of a society got up by women out in Cambridge, where they deduce the ethnic sources of prophetic inspiration—whatever that means!—from the 'Arabian Nights' and 'Mother Goose.' You might find ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... generation, when all is gone but hunger and cant, it is still possible that Man be a Man! For which last Evangel, the confirmation and rehabilitation of all other Evangels whatsoever, how can I be too grateful? On the whole, I suspect you yet know only Goethe the Heathen (Ethnic); but you will know Goethe the Christian by and by, and like that one far better. Rich showed me a Compilation* in green cloth boards that you had beckoned across the water: pray read the fourth volume of that, and let a man of your clearness of feeling ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... that upon the streets white faces look strange by contrast. When a white face does appear, it is usually under the shadow of an Indian helmet, and heavily bearded, and austere: the physiognomy of one used to command. Against the fantastic ethnic background of a11 this colonial life, this strong, bearded English visage takes something of heroic relief;—one feels, in a totally novel way, the dignity of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... or rather spores of settlement characterize all young geographical boundaries, where ethnic and political frontiers are still in the making. The early French, English, Dutch, and Swedish settlements in America took the form of archipelagoes in a surrounding sea of Indian-owned forest land; and in 1800, beyond the frontier of continuous settlement in ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... the Scandinavian peninsula is the home of the purest Teutonic ethnic stock. The Norwegians, Icelanders, Swedes, and Danes are racially closely related, and they belong to the same branch of the Aryan family as the Germans, Flemish, English, and Anglo-Americans. Physically, these people are powerfully built and tall, of ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... heart-strings of its children. Of the nature and origin of this mysterious and mighty power, the young Canadian knew little. His country was of too recent an origin for mystery, and its people too heterogeneous in their ethnic characteristics to furnish a soil for tribal instincts and passions. The passionate loves and hatreds of the clans, their pride of race, their deathless lealty; and more than all, and better than all, their religious instincts, faiths and prejudices; these, with the mystic, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... can trace their parentage back four generations; and the "daughter of an hundred earls" of whom there are probably many, is unconscious of her descent, and would profit nothing by it if this were not true. The blood of all the ethnic types that go to make up American citizenship flows in the veins of the Afro-American people, so that of the ten million of them in this country, accounted for by the Federal census, not more than four million are of pure negroid descent, ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.



Words linked to "Ethnic" :   soul, irreligious, ethnical, someone, cultural, mortal, pagan, ethnic music, social, ethnic minority, ethnic group, ethnicity, individual, person, ethnic slur, somebody, heathenish



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