gentile = ethnonymic (was: Heard on The Judges: crack)

[Mark Mandel]

On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 9:56 AM, I wrote:

>  OED says [-ish 1]:
>
>   1. In OE. and the cognate langs., chiefly forming gentile adjs. from
>  national names: e.g. British, English, Scottish

I understood this use of "gentile", but I don't think I've ever seen
it before. "Is it current?" I asked OED, and OED replied:

   b. Gram. Of a word: Indicating the country, locality, or nation to
which anything belongs.
1818 TODD, Gentile, belonging to a nation; as British, Irish, German,
&c., are gentile adjectives. 1854 R. G. LATHAM Native Races Russian
Emp. 223 Lainen is the regular Finlandish termination for gentile
nouns.

Jesse, how about fixing this one? This sense doesn't appear anywhere
else in OED online AFAICT.

(Now to efile.)

--
Mark Mandel

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