[Ads-l] Further Antedating of "Racist"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jan 4 11:39:58 UTC 2015


Nice, but it's not quite the current "racist."

Back then, "race" was a frequent, rather positively charged synonym for
"ancestral or cultural ethnicity" or "nationality."  (Americans were not a
"race," but the Irish were, if you get my drift.)

And a "nationalist" isn't necessarily a "racist" in the modern sense.

JL

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:05 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Further Antedating of "Racist"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Jan 3, 2015, at 10:20 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>
> > racist (OED 1926)
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> > 1924 _Portland Oregonian_ 14 Dec. 70 (America's Historical Newspapers) =
>  The elections show the Germans at the moment want neither racists now =
> [sic] communists -- that is, neither extreme nationalists nor extreme =
> revolutionists.
> >=20
> Well, it was nice while it lasted.
>
> LH=
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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