A. adj. 1. Of or belonging to Ethiopia (in the various historical uses of the name), or to the peoples known to the ancients as Æthiopes. Often used (now only humorously) as = ‘negro.’ Ethiopian serenader: a ‘nigger’ minstrel, a musical performer with face blackened to imitate a negro.
1684. Friendly Advice Planters E. & W. Indies, III. (title), Dialogue, Between an Ethiopean or Negro-Slave, and a Christian, That was his Master in America.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 413/134. The teeming Tide, Which pouring down from Ethiopian Lands.
1838. Lytton, Leila, IV. i. The Ethiopian guards … marched slowly in the rear.
1861. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, III. 190. There are [in London] 50 Ethiopian serenaders.
† b. absol. with pl. sense. Obs.
1635. Pagitt, Christianogr. (1640), 107. The Ethiopian and Moscovites doe baptize in the Church porch.
c. in proper names of various plants.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, II. xcviii. 281. The seconde Seseli … hath leaues like Iuye…. The stalk is blackishe…. And this is counted to be the Ethiopian Seseli.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, II. lxi. 347. In English we have thought good to call it the Aethiopian Apple.
1884. S. J. Capper, in Chr. World, 31 July, 575/4. Ethiopian lilies, which are exquisitely beautiful.
2. a. Anthropology. Used by some as the distinctive epithet of one of the races into which the human species is divided. b. Biol. The distinctive epithet of one of the biological ‘regions’ of the earth’s surface.
1861. Hulme, trans. Moquin-Tandon, I. vi. 36. In the kingdom which he [Man] constitutes (Hominal), there is but one genus (Homo), and in this genus but one species (Sapiens). This species presents three varieties or principal races (Caucasian, Mongolian, and Ethiopian).
1880. A. R. Wallace, Isl. Life, 53. Region, Ethiopian … Geographical Equivalent, Africa (south of the Sahara) with Madagascar.
B. sb. A native of Ethiopia; † a negro, blackamoor.
1552. Huloet, Ethiopians.
1598. Shaks., Merry W., II. iii. 28. Is he dead, my Ethiopian? Ibid. (1611), Wint. T. IV. iv. 375. This hand … as white as … Ethyopians tooth.
1686. Bunyan, Book for Boys & Girls (Repr.), 42. Moses was a fair and comely man, His wife a swarthy Ethiopian.
1727. De Foe, Syst. Magic, I. iii. (1840), 63. Ethiopians of Arabia Felix, which they call the South; and who, though Arabians, are called Ethiopians in Scripture.
b. An ‘Ethiopian serenader.’ See A. 1.
1861. Mrs. Carlyle, Lett., III. 81. The brass band is succeeded by a band of Ethiopians, and that again by a band of female fiddlers!
