human being
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˌhjuːmən ˈbiːɪŋ/
Forms: form: human beings
Etymology: From human (adjective) + being (noun).
The word human was originally an adjective, thus requiring a base noun.
Senses: examples: text: He began to reflect that in a few Minutes he might possibly deprive a human Being of Life, or might lose his own.
ref: 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, VII xiv:
glosses: A person; a large sapient, bipedal primate, with notably less hair than others of that order, of the species Homo sapiens.
examples: text: The first real human beings in China lived about 600,000 years ago. Fossils of Gigantopithecus, a Latin name for Giant Ape, were dug up at Lan-t'ien in the early 1960s. Though they looked a lot like apes, the Lan-t'ien people were among the first of our species to make tools.
ref: 1983, Valjean McLenighan, China, A History to 1949, Chicago: Children's Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 10:
text: As Australopithecus evolved into the first human being, Homo habilis, and then into the species, Homo sapiens, we have evolved as social beings
ref: 2002, Hyun Höchsmann, On Peter Singer, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, →ISBN, page 2:
text: Who was the first human being to pray? Perhaps he or she was a member of Homo habilis, the first truly human species, who roamed the gorges and plains of sub-Saharan Africa about two million years ago, or perhaps a member of Homo erectus (1.6 million—300,000 B.C.E.), Homo habilis’s immediate descendants, who spread across half the globe, from the eastern plains of Asia to the valleys of northern Europe.
ref: 2006, P. & C. Zaleski, Prayer: A History, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 15:
text: The category “human being” is a biological one, and Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, and Homo floresiensis all belong in it.
ref: 2006, M.S. Green, Engaging Philosophy, Hackett, →ISBN, page 143:
text: A specific part of the left hemisphere, known as Broca's area, which is associated in modern humans with speech production, has already been observed in casts of the brain of homo habilis, the first human being to make tools
ref: 2007, K. Kotsakis, “Tools and language”, in A.F. Christidis, editor, A History of Ancient Greek, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 106:
text: At several sites in Zambia, archaeologists have found stone tools dating back more than 200,000 years. The people who created these tools were probably Homo erectus, an early type of human being.
ref: 2009, B. Waters, Zambia in Pictures, Twenty-First Century Books, →ISBN, page 20:
text: We have an idea that the first human being, Homo habilis, was the fruit of an Australopithecus – either africanus or garhi – and that it subsequently developed into the upright human Homo erectus, from which both the Neanderthal and the modern human being derive
ref: 2014, S. Rasmussen, The Greatest Safari: In the Beginning Was Africa, 30 Degrees South, →ISBN, pages 223–224:
text: Probably the first human being infected by Taenia solium was the Homo ergaster [1, 2]. Therefore, the history of epileptic seizures began at the Lower Pleistocene (between 1.51 and 1.56 million years ago) when H. ergaster lived.
ref: 2018, H. Foyaca-Sibat, L.F. Ibañez-Valdés, “Introductory Chapter”, in H. Foyaca-Sibat, editor, Seizures, →DOI, →ISBN, page 2:
glosses: Any member of the genus Homo, including extinct species.
Synonyms: featherless biped
human
human bean
man
naked ape
person
sapiens
Related terms: ape
chimpanzee