race
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: rās
ipa: /ɹeɪs/
rhymes: -eɪs
Forms: form: races
form: racing
form: raced
form: raced
Etymology: 1560s, via Middle French race from Italian razza (early 14th century), of uncertain origin. Partially displaced native Middle English kinde (“kind, type, sort, race, nature”), whence English kind.
theories
* Diez and some other scholars suggest derivation from Proto-Germanic *raitō (whence Old High German reiza (“line”) and Old Norse ríta (“to score, log, outline”)), perhaps via Lombardic *raiza (“line”), which Körting notes is a literal rendering of Latin linea sanguinis (“bloodline of descent”). Anatoly Liberman says "the semantic fit is good" but the chronology falters; he says the Germanic word went out of use before the Italian word arose, and he says the intermediary is not attested.
* Some scholars suggest derivation from Old Spanish raza, rasa, from earlier ras, res (“head of cattle”), from Arabic رَأْس (raʔs, “head”), but Italian razza predates the Spanish word according to Diez and Meyer-Lübke.
* Meyer-Lübke suggested Latin generatio as the root; Körting says "the disappearance of two initial syllables hardly seems credible", but Meyer-Lübke notes the Venetian form narazza and the Old Bellunesian form naraccia, positing that after the first syllable ge- was lost, the remaining (una) narazza came to be reanalysed as una razza.
* Gianfranco Contini suggests the Italian word comes from Old French haraz (“troop of horses”), whence Modern French haras (“breeding farm for horses; stud farm”), from Old Norse hárr (“grey-haired; hoary”). Liberman considers this derivation the most likely.
* Other suggested Latin etyma:
** radius (perhaps via Vulgar Latin *radia) (per Baist).
** radix (“root”) (per Ulrich); Liberman says "the semantic match is excellent", and race (“rhizome of ginger”) (which definitely derives from radix) shows that the phonology is plausible.
** *raptiare (“breed falcons”) (per Körting).
** The nominative of ratio (perhaps via an unattested intermediate form *razzo), as opposed to ragione which derives from the accusative rationem.
* Other implausible suggestions include Slavic raz and Basque arraca, supposedly meaning "stud animal" (Basque arrazza, "race", derives from Spanish).
Senses: examples: text: To be raced as black in the U.S. translates symbolically into being considered inferior to whites, lazy, immoral, boisterous, violent, and sexually promiscuous.
ref: 1996, Philosophical Studies in Education, page 151:
text: From this perspective, the project of progressive blackness entails the edification of black people and the elimination of all forms of domination that limit this edification for all those raced as black.
ref: 2006, Athena D. Mutua, Progressive Black Masculinities?, Routledge, →ISBN, page 30:
text: By avoiding being raced as white, whites are able to maintain the illusion that they have always been individuals, that they have always accomplished their achievements through merit alone.
ref: 2008, George Yancy, Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 46:
text: [T]he private family qua mode of social reproduction still, frankly, sucks. It genders, nationalizes and races us. It norms us for productive work.
ref: 2020 March 24, Sophie Lewis, “The coronavirus crisis shows it's time to abolish the family”, in opendemocracy.net:
glosses: To assign a race to; to perceive as having a (usually specified) race.
examples: text: D'Hervieux obſerves that it is uſual to put the female canary bird to the male goldfinch, linnet, or the like, to breed; but for his part, he ſhould chuſe to put the male canary-bird to the female goldfinch, linnet, &c. becauſe the male uſually races more than the female, i. e. the young ones take more after the male than after the female.
ref: 1738 [1728], Ephraim Chambers, “Race”, in Cyclopaedia: Or, An Universal Dictionary Of Arts and Sciences, 2nd edition, London: D. Midwinter:
synonyms: come true
breed true
glosses: To pass down certain phenotypic traits to offspring.