a. and sb. Forms: 4–6 ethnyke, 5–7 ethnik(e, 6–8 ethnick(e, (6 æth-, ethenicke, etneke), 7 ethnique, (ethnycke), 6– ethnic. [ad. Gr. ἐθνικ-ός heathen, f. ἔθνος nation; in the LXX, hence in N. T. and the Fathers, τὰ ἔθνη = the nations, Gentiles (rendering Heb. gōyīm, pl. of gōy, nation, esp. non-Israelitish or ‘Gentile’ nation).
The Gr. ἔθνος was formerly often imagined to be the source of Eng. HEATHEN; hence the confused forms hethnic, HEATHENIC, which might be regarded as corrupt variants of this word.]
A. adj.
1. Pertaining to nations not Christian or Jewish; Gentile, heathen, pagan.
c. 1470. Harding, Chron., Printer’s Pref. ix. The bible bookes of Iudges and Kynges … farre surmounting all ethnike dooynges.
1545. Udall, Erasm. Par., Pref. 3. An ethnike and a pagane kyng.
1581. Marbeck, Bk. of Notes, 61. That all composition is against the nature of God even the Ethnicke Philosophers perceived.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., VI. xlix. § 171. Professing himselfe to be a Christian, and withall protesting that he would not be a soueraigne ouer an Ethnike Empire.
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., III. xlii. 281. Exhorted their Converts to obey their then Ethnique Princes.
1804. Moore, Epist., III. iii. 45. All the charm that ethnic fancy gave To blessed arbours o’er the western wave.
18[?]. Longf., Drinking Song, vii. These are ancient ethnic revels of a faith long since forsaken.
1851. Carlyle, Sterling, I. vii. (1872), 45. I find at this time his religion is as good as altogether Ethnic, Greekish.
1873. Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. II. 107. There is first the ethnic forecourt, then the purgatorial middle-space.
2. Pertaining to race; peculiar to a race or nation; ethnological.
1851. D. Wilson, Preh. Ann. (1863), I. ix. 229. That ethnic stock which embraced all existing European races.
1865. Reader, 11 Feb., 163/1. The slight development of ethnic peculiarities in childhood.
1875. Lightfoot, Comm. Col. (1886), 133. Heresies are at best ethnic: truth is essentially catholic.
† B. sb. One who is not a Christian or a Jew; a Gentile, heathen, pagan. Obs.
c. 1375. Sc. Leg. Saints, Barnabas, 161. A part of It [the temple] fel done & mad a gret distruccione Of ethnykis.
c. 1534. trans. Pol. Verg. Eng. Hist. (Camd. Soc.), I. 169. Beinge on all sides beesett with the Tracherie of these rude æthenickes, hee was sodainlie slayne.
1588. Allen, Admon., 37. Yf he obeie not, or heare not the Churche, let him be taken for an Ethnike.
1625. B. Jonson, Staple of N., II. iv. (1631), 28. A kinde of mule! That’s halfe an Ethnicke, halfe a Christian!
1664. Evelyn, Sylva (1776), 614. The Ethnics do still repute all great trees to be divine.
1728. Morgan, Algiers, I. iv. 76–7. They … look on them [the Jews] as several Degrees beneath … Heathens, Ethnicks, Pagans, and Idolaters.
