xenophobia antedated (1887)

Stephen Goranson goranson at DUKE.EDU
Mon Feb 4 15:19:38 UTC 2013


The Saturday Review...63, 1633,  Feb. 12, 1887,   "The Growth of Freedom in the Balkan Peninsula" pp. 237-238, here p. 238 col. 1.

Mr. Minchin's testimony as to Bulgaria is all the more valuable because he does not exactly like the Bulgarians. Their curious Xenophobia, which the Russians have with such incredible folly stirred up against themselves, obviously annoys him; and, though he admits their patriotism, their "bottom," their extraordinary development since they became a quasi-nation, and so forth, he evidently does not like "to live with them."

By the way, in the 1950s when debates about the Dead Sea Scrolls began to heat up, the similar sounding term Essenophobia was coined (in French by Andre Dupont-Sommer, ET by Geza Vermes). Esseneophobia is the fear of assigning authorship of some of the Qumran scrolls to Essenes, a Jewish "heresy" (in the old Greek sense, as a school of philosophy or the like). Dead Sea Scrolls debates and Essenophobia have not gone away. A recent court case involved attempts to dissociate Essenes from these scrolls through use of what a jury agreed included harassments and identity thefts (including mine).

Stephen Goranson
www.duke.edu/goranson

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Shapiro, Fred [fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2013 10:30 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: [ADS-L] Antedating of "Xenophobia"

xenophobia (OED 1919)

1903 _Current Literature_ Oct. (American Periodical Series)  In Mexico, however, even the hateful European term of Xenophobia does not exist.  Instead, the foreigner meets with a hearty welcome.

Fred Shapiro

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list