Hamitic
/hæˈmɪtɪk/noun
Relating to Ham or, historically, to a now-discredited racial classification once applied to some African languages and peoples.
Did you know?The so-called “Hamitic hypothesis” was a 19th- and 20th-century racial theory now rejected by scholarship, showing how a biblical name was weaponized into pseudo-science.
Etymological Timeline
Biblical Hebrew
Heb
חָם (Ḥām)
“Ham, the name of Noah’s son in the Hebrew Bible”
Late Latin
Lat
Hamita
“A descendant of Ham”
19th Century
Eng
Hamitic
“Relating to Ham or to a proposed family of African peoples and languages”
20th Century
Eng
Hamitic
“Used in outdated racial and linguistic classification schemes, later rejected”
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