plural of Sephardi "a Spanish or Portuguese Jew," 1851, from Modern Hebrew Sepharaddim "Spaniards, Jews of Spain," from Sepharad, name of a country mentioned only in Obadiah v.20, probably meaning "Asia Minor" or a part of it (Lydia, Phrygia), but identified by the rabbis after the Targum Jonathan as "Spain." As distinct from Ashkenazim (q.v.). Related: Sephardic.
mid-13c., "sacrifice by fire, burnt offering," from Old French holocauste (12c.), or directly from Late Latin holocaustum, from Greek holokauston "a thing wholly burnt," neuter of holokaustos "burned whole," from holos "whole" (from PIE root *sol- "whole, well-kept") + kaustos, verbal adjective of kaiein "to burn" (see caustic).
Originally a Bible word for "burnt offerings," given wider figurative sense of "massacre, destruction of a large number of persons" from 1670s. The Holocaust "Nazi genocide of European Jews in World War II," first recorded 1957, earlier known in Hebrew as Shoah "catastrophe." The word itself was used in English in reference to Hitler's Jewish policies from 1942, but not as a proper name for them.
English chronicler Richard of Devizes in his contemporary account of the coronation of Richard I in 1189 used the word holocaust when he described the mass murder of the Jews of London, although he meant it as "a sacrificial offering."
city in northern Bavaria, from German Nürnberg, Medieval Latin Norinberga. The second element is Berg "mountain," the first element is of unknown origin. Associated with the Nazis as the site of mass party rallies every September during the Third Reich. The Nuremberg Laws (1935) barred Jews from German citizenship and forbid intermarriage with Aryans. The Nuremberg trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity were held there 1945-6.
1825 in reference to Moravian protestants; 1869 in reference to the dispersion of the Jews; from Greek diaspora "dispersion," from diaspeirein "to scatter about, disperse," from dia "about, across" (see dia-) + speirein "to scatter" (see sparse). The Greek word was used in Septuagint in Deuteronomy xxviii.25. A Hebrew word for it is galuth "exile." The earlier word for it in English was Latinate dispersion (late 14c.). Related: Diasporic.
c. 1300, from Old French transmigracion "exile, diaspora" (13c.) and directly from Late Latin transmigrationem (nominative transmigratio) "change of country," noun of action from past-participle stem of Latin transmigrare "to wander, move, to migrate," from trans "across, beyond; over" (see trans-) + migrare "to migrate" (see migration). Originally literal, in reference to the removal of the Jews into the Babylonian captivity; general sense of "passage from one place to another" is attested from late 14c.; sense of "passage of the soul after death into another body" first recorded 1590s.
The Aeolian harp (the phrase is attested from 1791) was made of tuned strings set in a frame; passing breezes caused them to sound harmoniously. Another name for it was anemochord (1832). The ancient district of Aiolis in Asia Minor was said to have been named for the wind god, hence Aeolian also refers to one branch of the ancient Greek people.
a name given in the southwest of England to a large sandstone boulder, by 1743, properly sarsen stone, that is, "Saracen stone," from Saracen in the old, broad sense of "pagan, heathen" and thus used generally in the popular mind for the former (pre-Christian) inhabitants of the region.
The same word was applied to the ancient leavings outside Cornish tin mines, also known as Jews' pits, those being the other people formerly credited in Western Europe with any ancient structure of forgotten origin, based vaguely on Biblical chronologies.
