Thank You Internet... I Now Have A Different Understanding Of The Phrase... "Anti-Semitic"...

[MineralMan]

106. Why are you attempting to dilute the meaning

of antisemitism? That word has never meant "fear or hatred of semitic people." It has always meant "fear or hatred of Jews."

As someone who spent a lot of time at a university studying linguistics, I can tell you that your reverse construction of the meaning of that word is ridiculous. One can spend a lot of time screwing around with linguistics to come up with completely irrational word meanings, but words mean what they mean in usage, not in their linguistic roots.

As has been pointed out to you, the word was created as a neologism in Nazi Germany, and then made the transition into English usage. It did not exist before that. It meant "fear or hatred of Jews." It had nothing to do with the roots of a regional language group at all.

Attempting to retroactively define a word that has a strong, focused definition, as recorded in every dictionary I've seen, is specious. My question is why you are doing this. I'm sure I don't know, but would like to hear an explanation from you.