| *1a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian Akkadians], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia Phoenicians], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew Hebrews], and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic Arabs] | | *1a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian Akkadians], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia Phoenicians], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew Hebrews], and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic Arabs] |
| In [[linguistics]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnology ethnology], '''Semitic''' (from the Biblical "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem Shem]", Hebrew: שם, [[translated]] as "name", Arabic: ساميّ) was first used to refer to a [[language]] family of largely [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East Middle Eastern] origin, now called the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages '''Semitic languages''']. This [[family]] includes the ancient and modern forms of Akkadian, Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Phoenician, Tigre and Tigrinya among others. | | In [[linguistics]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnology ethnology], '''Semitic''' (from the Biblical "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem Shem]", Hebrew: שם, [[translated]] as "name", Arabic: ساميّ) was first used to refer to a [[language]] family of largely [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East Middle Eastern] origin, now called the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages '''Semitic languages''']. This [[family]] includes the ancient and modern forms of Akkadian, Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Phoenician, Tigre and Tigrinya among others. |