gentile
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈd͡ʒɛntaɪl/
rhymes: -aɪl
Forms: form: Gentile
Etymology: Borrowed from French gentil (“gentile”), from Latin gentīlis (“of or belonging to the same people or nation”), morphologically from gēns (“clan; tribe; people, family”) + adjective suffix -īlis (“-ile”). Doublet of gentle, genteel, jaunty, and Gentoo. See also gens, gender, genus, and generation.
Senses: examples: text: This ſhall bring down the Judgment upon Rome, preſently after the Appearance of Antichriſt: and as upon Rome, ſo alſo upon all the Gentile Chriſtians, who have a Name to live but are dead, being fallen away from their Firſt Love and Faith, and ſo having made themſelves Veſſels fit for Deſtruction, when this ſore Judgment ſhall go forth.
ref: 1711, [John Hildrop], “The Preface”, in A Treatise of the Three Evils of the Last Times: […], London: Printed by M. J. for R[obert] Knaplock […], R. and J. Bonwicke […], and H. Clements […], →OCLC, pages lxxiv–lxxv:
text: If we read the Epistles of St. Paul, we shall soon discover what efforts the Jewish converts made to bring the Gentile converts into the observance of every Jewish custom compatible with christianity:^([sic]) and as we do not discover in those Epistles any traces of a dispute on this head between the Jewish and Gentile converts, we may fairly conclude that the Gentile converts adopted without hesitation the time-honoured manner of praising the true God made use of by the Jewish converts, instead of the Pagan mode of singing, which was then associated in their minds with every thing unclean and abominable.
ref: 1847, William Kelly, “Introduction”, in A Grammar of Gregorian, or Plain Chant Music, London: Thomas Richardson and Son, […], →OCLC, pages 11–12:
text: Down in the workshop all the elves were makin' toys
For the good gentile girls and the good gentile boys
ref: 1996, "Weird Al" Yankovic, “The Night Santa Went Crazy”, in Bad Hair Day:
text: There is further evidence of the fact that both Romans and the Herodians distinguished Jewish from Gentile areas and treated them differently. Herod did not produce pagan coins, bearing an image of Augustus or himself, but rather good Jewish coins. It is noteworthy that he built numerous pagan buildings, including temples honouring Augustus and an amphitheater for Greek games, and he donated gymnasia to territories that he did not govern: […] But (and this is a very big "but") he put none of these Gentile/pagan buildings in the Jewish parts of his domain.
ref: 2001, E[d] P[arish] Sanders, “Jesus in Galilee”, in Doris Donnelly, editor, Jesus: A Colloquium in the Holy Land, New York, N.Y.; London: Continuum International Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 14:
synonyms: non-Jewish
goyish
glosses: Non-Jewish.
examples: text: [John] Bale, following Annius [Annio da Viterbo], argued that druids, bards and other ‘gentile’ (pagan) priests had preserved from Noah’s time the memory of a true religion that believed ‘that there is one God, immortal and incomprehensible’ (‘unum esse Deum immortalem, et incomprehensibilem ...’).
ref: 2013, Marion Gibson, Imagining the Pagan Past: Gods and Goddesses in Literature and History since the Dark Ages, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 26:
glosses: Heathen, pagan.
glosses: Non-Mormon.
examples: text: As distinct from the old gentile order, the state, first, divides its subjects according to territory. As we have seen, the old gentile associations, built upon and held together by ties of blood, became inadequate, largely because they presupposed that the members were bound to a given territory, a bond which had long ceased to exist. The territory remained, but the people had become mobile. Hence, division according to territory was taken as the point of departure, and citizens were allowed to exercise their public rights and duties wherever they settled, irrespective of gens and tribe.
ref: 1902, Frederick Engels, translated by Ernest Untermann, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Chicago, Ill.: C. H. Kerr & Co., →OCLC:
text: It is possible to manage without a gentile system. Many ethnoi are divided into tribes and clans.
ref: 1990, Leo Gumilëv, Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere, Moscow: Progress Publishers, →ISBN, page 85:
glosses: Relating to a clan, tribe, or nation; clannish, tribal, national.
examples: text: The council was the great feature of ancient society, Asiatic, European and American, from the institution of the gens in savagery to civilization. […] As the council sprang from the gentile organization the two institutions have come down together through the ages. The Council of Chiefs represents the ancient method of evolving the wisdom of mankind and applying it to human affairs. Its history, gentile, tribal, and confederate, would express the growth of the idea of government in its whole development, until political society supervened into which the council, changed into a senate, was transmitted.
ref: 1877, Lewis H[enry] Morgan, Ancient Society, or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, →OCLC, pages 84–85:
text: He [Lewis Henry Morgan] was anxious to look for the origins of the crucial "stage" that he found exemplified in his beloved Iroquois and the North American Indians generally, that of the gentes. […] Morgan called this gens or clan stage, perhaps confusingly, the stage of gentile society. His discovery that this form of what we would now call "unilineal descent" characterized not only the whole of North and South America, but also the original societies of Greece and Rome, was a stupendous revelation about the universal history of mankind. He knew little of Africa and Asia, but they would have supported his observation, the gentile organization—the clans—lasting in China, for example, until modern times.
ref: 2011, Robin Fox, The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind, Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 300:
glosses: Of or pertaining to a gens or several gentes.
examples: text: Gentile verbs are so denominated because derived from gentile nouns, or from proper nouns, or adnouns: they relate to countries, and to places generally, or to men: the following are examples: Greecise, Latinise, Anglicise, […] Aristotelise, Sophoclise, Shakesperianise. Gentile verbs in their radical form terminate in ise, with some few exceptions in fy, ate, and in their past participle with ised, being all of the first conjugation: they are formed by annexing ise to a gentile noun or to a proper substantive or to a proper adjective.
ref: 1825, Samuel Oliver Jun., A General, Critical Grammar of the Inglish Language; on a System Novel, and Extensive: […], London: Published, for the author, by Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, →OCLC, page 115:
text: Gentile Nouns. […] To this form belong our gentile nouns Englishman, Welshman, Scotchman, Irishman. These nouns are represented in Irish by adjectives or nouns of the form (1+ac): Alban-ac, Scotchman.
ref: 1854, William Barnes, “Etymology”, in A Philological Grammar: Grounded upon English, and Formed from a Comparison of More Than Sixty Languages. […], London: John Russell Smith, […], →OCLC, page 71:
topics: grammar
human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: Of a part of speech such as an adjective, noun or verb: relating to a particular city, nation or country.
Derived terms: gentiledom
gentilic
gentilical
gentilically
gentilise
gentilish
gentilization
gentilize
nongentile
Related terms: genteel