'Semites' - Do you know what group of people this word relates to? 10 pts ready for correct answerer!?

Question

(Have put this in Philosphy because it get's more viewers than other more appropriate categories.)

I ask this question as a result of Western culture's general misconception and misinterpretation of words with the root word 'Semite' - such as the word 'Anti-Semetic'.

Do you know what group of people the Semites are?

If so tell me - what you think the word 'Anti-Semetic' literally means in light of it's root word that you have just defined.

Please don't forget to answer the last bit of the question - what you think the word Anti-semetic means literally in light of the defined root word. Cheers.

Answer 1

Semite:
1. A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.
2.A Jew.
3.Bible: A descendant of Shem.

Anti-Semite:
One who discriminates against or who is hostile toward or prejudiced against Jews.
(The question remains why the same dictionary does not include Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians in the definition of anti-Semite.My guess is that its compilers were rather prejudiced and bigoted in their selection of definitions.)

Answer 2

The people descended from Shem, the son of Noah are thought to have been called Semites.

Anti-Semitism (alternatively spelled antisemitism) is hostility towards or prejudice against Jews (not, in common usage, Semites in general — see the Scope section below). This happens on an individual level and goes on to the institutionalized prejudice and persecution once prevalent in European societies, of which the highly explicit ideology of Adolf Hitler's National Socialism was the most extreme form. (source en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-semitic)

Answer 3

Semites: Jews and Arabs.

Anti-Semetic means to hate Semites because of racial reasons.
But its mostly used in the sense of anti-judaism -- this term is more appropriate, since there are also Arabs who hate Jews, but by definition they cannot be anti-semetic.

Answer 4

The term Semites is applied to a group of peoples closely related in language, whose habitat is Asia and partly Africa. The expression is derived from the Biblical table of nations (Genesis 10), in which most of these peoples are recorded as descendants of Noah's son Sem.

The term Semite was proposed at first for the languages related to the Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term. Since then the name has been generally adopted, except that modern science uses it in a somewhat wider sense to include all those Peoples who are either demonstrably of Semitic origin, or who appear in history as completely Semitized.
CLASSIFICATION

In historic times all Western Asia (see below), with the exception of the peninsula of Asia Minor, was Semitic. From the philological point of view the Semitic peoples are divided into four chief Babylonian-Assyrian Semites (East Semites), Chanaanitic Semites, (West Semites), Aramaic Semites (North Semites), and Arabian Semites (South Semites). The last-named group is divided into North and South Arabians, of which last the Abyssinians are a branch. The first three groups are usually termed North Semites, in contrast to the Arabian group, or South Semites. But the classification of the Babylonian with the Aramaic and Chanaanitic Semites is not permissible from the philological point of view.

Answer 5

Jews

Answer 6

Semites are mites that feed from semen..

Anti-semites is the poison to kill the semites..

:-)

Answer 7

how can Arabs be antisemetic are you saying there anti themselves you fool

Answer 8

no not really