3 ms·
It does literally mean that but it contemporaneously had a connotation of "not civilized" just as it does today. I don't think there's a word in English that ca
by morelisp 4y ago
It does literally mean that but it contemporaneously had a connotation of "not civilized" just as it does today. I don't think there's a word in English that carries this same double-meaning. For example, "un-American" certainly has the right meaning for the second connotation but it's never used in the purely literal sense. Conversely "foreigner" does have that literal first sense and can be used with a pejorative connotation, but still only one meaning; the foreignness is inherently pejorative, it's not a synecdoche.