Etymologically
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diaspora

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /daɪˈæs.pə.ɹə/, /daɪˈæs.pɹə/[1]
  • US: /daɪˈæs.pɚ.ə/, /daɪˈæs.pɹə/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek διασπορά (diasporá, “dispersion, scattering”),[2][3][4][5] which the OED explains as formed from δια- (dia-) and σπορά (sporá, “sowing, seed”), after διασπείρω (diaspeírō, “to scatter about, disperse”);[2] most other dictionaries derive the noun directly from that verb,[3][4][6][5] itself from διά (diá, “across, apart”) and σπείρω (speírō, “to sow, scatter”).[3][4][7] The OED allows that the English word may have come instead through New Latin diaspora, recorded from 1643.[2] The Greek noun occurs twelve times in the Septuagint, among them Deuteronomy 28:25, "you shall be in dispersion in all kingdoms of the earth".[2][7][6] It is related to spore, sporadic and, according to Etymonline, sparse.[3][4][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The body of Jews living outside the land of Israel, or their dispersion beyond it: 1694, in John Owen's Plea for Scripture Ordination.[2] Wiktionary quotes the word, explained as "a scattering or sowing abrode", in a 1594 translation of Lambert Daneau's commentary on the minor prophets.[8]

Semantic evolution

Before diaspora the usual English word for the scattering of the Jews was the Latinate dispersion, from the late 14th century.[6][2] The extended sense, any group of people spread beyond their homeland, is recorded early, in a 1749 translation of an account of the Moravian Brethren;[2] in this use, of Protestant communities in German-speaking countries, English followed German Diaspora, used of the Moravians from 1758 or earlier.[2] Etymonline likewise dates the Moravian use to 1825 and the Jewish one only to 1869,[6] and Barnhart, MWU and Dictionary.com put the word's entry into English in the 1870s and 1880s.[9][10][11] Dictionary.com notes how the word widened from a single historical sense to the displacement of other peoples, such as Africans carried across the Atlantic by the slave trade.[11] The sense "the state of being dispersed", often in the phrase in diaspora, dates from 1848.[2] Collins records a Caribbean use for the descendants of sub-Saharan Africans living anywhere in the world.[12]

Timeline

  • 1594 – quoted in a translation of Daneau's commentary on the minor prophets.[8]
  • 1643 – diaspora in post-classical Latin.[2]
  • 1694 – the Jews living outside the land of Israel.[2]
  • 1749 – any people dispersed beyond their homeland.[2]
  • 1825 – of the Moravian Protestants, in Etymonline.[6]
  • 1848 – the state of being dispersed, in diaspora.[2]
  • 1869 – of the dispersion of the Jews, in Etymonline.[6]
  • 1876 – first date in Barnhart.[9]
  • 1881 – first known use of the Jewish sense in MWU.[10]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (usually capitalized) The scattering of the Jews outside ancient Palestine after the Babylonian exile, and later beyond the land of Israel.[10][12][2]
  2. The Jewish communities living outside Israel, or the places where they live, taken together.[10][12][2]
  3. Any people spread far from their original homeland, or the communities they form: the Lebanese diaspora in West Africa.[12][2][10]
  4. The dispersion or spreading of such a people; the state of being dispersed: writers living in diaspora.[12][2]
  5. (New Testament) The body of Christians living outside Palestine.[12]
  6. (Caribbean) The descendants of sub-Saharan African peoples living anywhere in the world.[12]

Word family

  • diasporic
  • spore
  • sporadic
  • sperm
  • dispersion

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  4. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
  9. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  10. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  11. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins