The Webster definition is neither new, nor does it have anything to do with (contemporary) Arab-bashing.

The Arab=vagabond=vagrant usage is very old-fashioned and one which as far as I know, was restricted to England.

I remember reading childrens books from the 1920’s and 1930’s in which naughty, rascally children were referred to as ‘cheeky Arabs’. This had absolutely nothing to do with their ethnicity.

Clearly, the term grew out of Britains colonial experience in the Middle East and the Empire’s disdain for its Arab subjects.

I am not trying to excuse the use of the term, but this usage did, so Websters was doing nothing wrong in pointing this out. I also doubt sincerely that this is the only definition that Websters carries of the word Arab, or even that it is the first definition of the word on the page.

Clearly the usage is unacceptable today. It was in the past as well, but then times and people have changed since then. Don’t forget, there are lots of words considered appropriate in the past that are no longer considered (and rightly so) appropriate today.

While it may be fun to juxtapose a definition from Websters and a quote from Ricky Martin to make a point, at least try to ensure that point is made within its historical context.

Cher Mustapha,

1) Vous avez littéralement renvoyé comme un malpropre un commentateur relativement intéressant parce que vous n’en partagiez pas les opinions ou plutôt le style irrévérencieux. Pas sympa.

2) Merriam-Webster et non Miriam Webster. Pas rigoureux.

3) Une simple recherche de “arab” dans le Thesaurus ne donne rien de tout ce que vous avancez… Pas sérieux.

No entries found that match arabs
nor
No entries found that match arabs

Mettons tout cela sur le compte des vacances bien méritées.

A bientôt dans de meilleures dispositions.

Bien à vous

Check

http://www.m-w.com

Edward, you’re probably right about the origin of the definition. But remember, people stopped using words like negro a long time ago. We came a long way into political correctness nowadays.

Jean Marie,
you can’t find the definition in the online free version of the thesaurus, you need to see the printed book or have an online subscription

actually, you can check the dictionary online, and this is the following that I got:

Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin Arabus, Arabs, from Greek Arab-, Araps
1 a : a member of the Semitic people of the Arabian peninsula b : a member of an Arabic-speaking people
2 : ARABIAN HORSE
- Arab adjective

Mustafa,

The point still stands.

There was/is a usage of the word ‘Arab’ in this fashion. Whether you agree with it or not is besides the point. A dictionary exists to explain words, not simply as they may exist/be used today, but also as they existed/were used in the past.

Whether you like the usage or or would chose to use it yourself is irrelevant. The dictionary exists to explain. It leaves making value judgements up to its users.

On-line you can get the same racist synonyms (and more) if you go to http://thesaurus.reference.com/
and using the thesaurus check for “arab”, then from “Roget’s New Millennium™ Thesaurus” you will get (delinquent, good-for-nothing, grifter, leper, loafer, lounger, ne’er-do-well, outcast, pariah, remittance man, renegade, scumbag, skid-row bum, slimeball, stiff, street arab, stumblebum, tramp, untouchable, vag, vagabond, vagrant, wastrel, prostitute, slut…and so on…)

As for M-Webster’s, the definition of Anti-Semitism is also discriminating and unacceptable as it points to, among other things, anyone who opposes “Zionism” to be Anti-Semitic, there are Jews against “Zionism”!!!
These definitions may also be elsewhere, they are unexcusable, they may go back to the age of SLAVERY, but SLAVERY HAS BEEN ABOLISHED, at least officially, this is pure RACISM.

Anyone has access to the print version?

What does the print-version say when you look up the word “Jew”
I am sure it is going to be something pejorative. Remember the Jew character in Dickens??

Don’t fall in the political correctness bulls**t and focus on more important things for arabs and most of all islam: REFORMS REFORMS REFORMS… All the rest is irrelevant…

This is outrageous but it’s not the Merriam Webster’s fault. Some racist people use the word with this meaning and it’s the job of the dictionnary to report all the meanings of a word, disregarding if its politically correct. I am sure they have an entry for the word ‘nigger’ as well.

“To them I say: Today, we are all Arabs!”

I consider myself Arab only if it means that we share a language, not a nationality, but I support you on this.

Mustapha,

Unfortunately, this racist propaganda shit has been going for ages, long before the days of Fox News and Merriam Webster’s vocab revisionism: Hollywood, Broadway, the Washington Post, the New York Times and other “mainstream” media have been churning out anti-Arab clichés for the past 50 years.

Sometimes Hollywood’s fiction is kind of prescient: in “The Long Kiss Goodnight” (1996) with Geena Davis and Samuel Jackson, a group of reckless Pentagon policy makers plans to bomb New York and blame the “terror attack” on some moustached Lebanese immigrants…
Sounds familiar?

Interesting article in the Washington Post yesterday:
“…We set out to establish a democracy, but we’re slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic,” said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity…”

So this is what we’ve come to uh? 2 ½ years after the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, a far away Middle-Eastern country that posed no threat to the West whether “imminent” (remember Dick Cheney’s sci-fi army of Iraqi drones eager to nuke Cheyenne, Wyoming) or otherwise.

With all its faults (the Baathist regime was certainly not more authoritarian than say Wahhabi-Saudi absolute monarchy, Islamo-fascist Shiite Iran, or Nazi-Kemalist Turkey), the Republic of Iraq under Saddam Hussein was probably the most progressive/secular country in the Arab world: 20% of members of government and high ranking civil servants were women (most of them wore no veil unlike their oppressed sisters in neighbouring countries); the number 2 man in government was Tariq Hanna Azeez, a devout Roman Catholic; most of Saddam’s senior advisers were French and/or UK educated Middle-Eastern Christian; and Iraq was the third largest importer of Johnnie Walker whiskey!

Today, as Rumsfeld’s protégés finalize the drafting of the country’s “constitution”, it has become clear that the new Iraq is fast morphing into a totalitarian Islamic Shiite Bantustan under the tutelage of its Iranian and Hebrew masters.

The Neocon’s “forward leaning foreign policy” turned out to be scam on a gigantic scale: The US government has spent $ 400 billions in taxpayers money and more than 1,900 American kids have lost their life for a useless military adventure…

There’s an old saying in Latin…qui bono, who benefits?
Iran and Israel are clearly the only winners: for 2 ½ years, they’ve watched from the sidelines as American soldiers massacred tens of thousands of innocent Sunni Arabs in Fallujah, Tickrit and Baghdad: today, Teheran and Tel Aviv are ready to reap the fruits of the “global war on terror”- a failed policy in need for a change of name… “Colonial proxy war for the advancement of Zion” would be a more fitting appellation.

That’s weird. I think it’s mainly to do with term “street arab” which is a term that I am unfamilar with. But if I had in past read something which used “street arab” I would have translated this to mean a street person who is arab, though of course, it doesn’t actually mean this- fairly close, but obviously the person wouldn’t need to be an arab to be called a street arab.
For instance I imagine the brits at one time [and perhaps still today] might use the term to describe any street denizen: street vendors, homeless people, street children, or anyone who spends a lot of time on the street.

“Don’t fall in the political correctness bulls**t and focus on more important things for arabs and most of all islam: REFORMS REFORMS REFORMS… All the rest is irrelevant…”

You are right, Arabs need REFORM, part of this is to point out these unacceptable usages and meanings and request that they be clarified in the dictionaries as wrongful stereotyping especially when ARABS themselves take them for granted (problems with self esteem, and self-blame need “reform” too). The correction should be for any type of stereotyping.

What would you say about a definition in M-W that would incriminate simply because you are a supporter or a sympathizer with the Palestinian cause, since in M-W you are an anti-semitic if you are a sympathizer with the enemies of the “State of Israel”.

This definition also needs to be “REFORMED”

Well, OK! I was enjoying the comments until you got to a point that pushed one of my buttons. To quote: “…in M-W you are an anti-semitic if you are a sympathizer with the enemies of the “State of Israel”.

Please do NOT confuse feelings or opinions about a people or race with opinions about national entities.

I live in the States, and read lots of comments on these blogs critical of the US Government, but I have never thought that those comments were also directed at the people living in America.

In the same way, I criticize things which Israel does when I think that they are improper, such as excessive force exerted by the IDF, That in no way should imply that I dislike Jews as a race.

It is NOT antisemitic to criticize Israel

barney

I fully agree with Dr Vega’s post

Hello Barney G.
What you said is exactly the point I was trying make, criticising the “State of Israel” is a political stand, while Anti-Semitism is simply racism and they should not be confused, but the definition in M-Webster confuses both as I have quoted below, you’ll find two definitions, NOTICE THE SECOND.

Main Entry: an•ti-sem•i•tism Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation: () -
Function: noun
Usage: usually capitalized S
1 : hostility toward Jews as a religious or racial minority group often accompanied by social, economic, and political discrimination — compare RACISM
2 : OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM; SYMPATHY WITH OPPONENTS TO THE STATE OF ISRAEL.
Source: Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Collegiate Thesaurus, 3rd Edition (You will need to subscribe for online version)

[also check http://aquacool.blogspot.com/2005/08/racism-in-dictionary.html for details on the reaction of M-Websters]

I heard that this usage of “Arab” came from when Syrians/Lebanese first came to the US and usually worked as hockers or were vagrants. IT was a common stereotype as many of them did not know English and could not do much else and peddling was easy and profitable. There was an article about Arab Americans I read this in a few weeks ago (maybe I will find it and send it). People generally looked down on Arabs for that reason then. I was not aware that this was put into a dictionary.

I remember in Middle School it was common for white or black children to call me an ‘Arab’ as an insult if there was an arguement or they just felt like picking on somebody. I think Arab is the only ethnic group I have heard consistantly used as an insult. Sometimes people say “stupid German” or ‘Stupid Jew” but the definition of these is not negative. For Arab, you are “stupid Arab” “at least Im not Arab” or sometimes it is an insult to be called an Arab “you Arab” I remember hearing a Pakistani girl called. There is of coarse also ‘Ay-rab”. This definition is irritating, but should be expected I suppose.

Even though the Dict. explanation is probably as Edward said, an old English term, not a recent insult, it is known that the arabs have a seriously deformed picture in the mind of western societies. This picture has unfortunatly overshadowed the Lebanese society as well, since people in the west see Lebanese, and i am quoting a friend in the US, “moving from one hut to the other on camels, wearing sandals”. It’s not with an intention of disconnecting Lebanon from the arab world that i say that, because i personally think that the Lebanese people is what gave the arab world all the good things it has, however serious reform is what all these countries need before calling for a union such as the european one. Coutries such as Lebanon should only join a union to improve itself not to be pulled backwards. Signs of reform in the arab world are finally starting to show, and i guess we have 14th of march to thank for that.

Although it’s not connected directly to our subject, i just want to ask “dr victorino de la vega”, how do you think Iran is “ready to reap the fruits of the “global war on terror””, while what we are seing is Iran being the final target of this war, and as Bill Clinton once said “Syria is not the objective, it’s a barrier on the road to Iran.” (March 04, 2005).

I really doubt that the term was used to describe Lebanese immigrants in the US. I read a book on US immigration and it said Lebanese immigrants had the second highest average wage, above the italians and the poless (the only immigrants who had a higher wage were the east-european jews).

The term probably derived from the English occupation of Jordan and part of the arabic peninsula because a large part of the population was nomad bedouin.

Anyway a lot of arabs give the same pejorative definition to ‘bado’ or bedouin.

“Anyway a lot of arabs give the same pejorative definition to ‘bado’ or bedouin.”

This statement is true, and we, the Lebanese, do the same with other nationalities,ex. nationalities of honest workers from the east, but we do not put these definitions in our dictionaries. And yet it is not acceptable.

I am sorry to comment twice on the same topic, but I feel strongly about something and need to get it out.

The term ‘Arab’ is used in the States, today, in two ways. The most frequent usage refers to a person living in Saudi Arabia. Someone from Beirut would be referred to as Lebanese. from Rabat as a Moroccan. The word “Arab” is not used as Arabists would use it; that concept is foreign to most Americans.

It is also used in reference to street urchins, etc, just as in the second definition quoted above, but this usage is restricted to literary usages of the word. I HAVE NEVER HEARD THE WORD ‘ARAB’ USED IN THAT SECOND MEANING IN ANY CONVERSATION I CAN REMEMBER. It just isn’t used that way today.

What I am most upset about is M-Ws acceptance that criticism of Israel is equated to anti-Semitism. No, what it actually says, as posted by Bashir, is: “Opposition to Zionism; sympathy with opponents to the State of Israel.” My concern is that the definition is getting too close to saying that anti-Semitism equates to ‘criticism of the state of Israel.’

I have heard Jews in the US use it that way in what seems an attempt to stifle criticism of any aspect of the Israel, and that is dangerous, and particularly dangerous to Israel as foolish stifling of criticism can lead to strong emotions.

So my whole message is:
Cool it about that second definition of the word ‘Arab’ ; it just isn’t used that way today, only in old books.
and
Never let them equate anti-Semitism to criticism of actions of Israel.”

barney