humanity

English

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English humanyte, humanite, humanitye. By surface analysis, human or humane +‎ -ity. Partly displaced mankind, from Old English mancynn (literally “human race”).

Pronunciation

  • (US) IPA(key): /hjuˈmænɪti/, [j̊ʊwˈmænɪɾi]
  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

humanity (countable and uncountable, plural humanities)

  1. (uncountable) Humankind; human beings as a group.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:humankind
    • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
      Then he commenced to talk, really talk. and inside of two flaps of a herring's fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt's boy at the town hall show. He talked about the ills of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all.
    • 1962 April, J. N. Faulkner, “Summer Saturday at Waterloo”, in Modern Railways, page 265:
      At last the concourse is relatively clear of humanity and the task of clearing up can begin.
    • 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:
      It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: […]; perhaps to moralise on the oneness or fragility of the planet, or to see humanity for the small and circumscribed thing that it is; […].
    • 2024 May 4, John Naughton, “The internet is in decline – it needs rewilding”, in The Guardian‎[1]:
      “The internet”, Eric Schmidt, former chairman of Google, famously observed, “is the first thing that humanity' has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.”
  2. (uncountable) The human condition or nature.
  4. (uncountable) The quality of being benevolent; humane traits of character; humane qualities or aspects.
    Synonym: humaneness
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Ship”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 90:
      Think of that; by that sweet girl that old man had a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!
    • [1890], The American Humane Education Society, “Kiling Animals Humanely”, in A[nna] Sewell, Black Beauty: […], American edition, Boston, Mass.: […] [T]he American Humane Education Society, →OCLC:
      Killing Animals Humanely. Humanity requires that animals be killed in the quickest and least painful manner. The following circular has been sent by our American Humane Education Society very widely through the country.
  5. (countable) Any academic subject belonging to the humanities.
    Philosophy is a humanity while psychology is a science.

Derived terms

Translations

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Translations to be checked

Further reading

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