Xenophobia has been around for a long time, the word 'xenophobia' is relatively new—our earliest citation is from 1880.
Xenophobia was formed from a brace of words found in ancient Greek, xenos (which can mean either "stranger" or "guest") and phobos (which can mean eitherenophobia—"fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners"—has the look and feel of a word that has been in the English language for hundreds of years, borne of the tumultuous political climates of the Renaissance and the penchant that many writers back then had for fashioning fancy new words from Latin and Greek.
It is not that old. In fact, the word is relatively new (with an emphasis on "relatively"), with all evidence suggesting that it originated near the end of the 19th century. Our earliest citation is from 1880 "flight" or "fear").
Dictionary definitions of xenophobia include: "deep-rooted fear towards foreigners" (Oxford English Dictionary; OED), and "fear of the unfamiliar". The word comes from the Ancient Greek words ξÎνος (xenos), meaning "strange", "foreigner", and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear".
i think i just learn something more today....im so happy for this blog
ReplyDelete