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supernice wrote

Though this is welcome news, I still wonder why "semite" has come to be an exclusively Jewish term, disregarding all other peoples who speak semitic languages.

Seems like a sham to me. Hebrew is only one of the semitic languages.

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ziq OP wrote

Yeah, they've kind of monopolized that word, it's always bothered me too.

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urieldacosta wrote (edited )

We didn't "monopolize" it. Like the word "Jew," it was imposed upon us by gentiles. It originated with the popularization of pseudo-scientific racial supremacist ideologies in the 19th century ("Jews aren't Aryan, they are inferior Semites"). That is why, to this day, the descriptive definition of "anti-Semitic" means "anti-Jewish."

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