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

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:04 PM -0400 4/12/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>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

Right--that's why we say "Israeli" and not "Israelish".  Too gentile.

LH

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

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