Aplogies if this has been answered elsewhere, but the search didn’t throw up any matches for me.
In this column, Cecil says: “In fact, for a long time “Eskimo” was thought to be a derisive Native American term meaning “eater of raw flesh,” although this is now discounted.”
I thought this was the meaning, and that that was why the more PC word to use was Inuit. So, what does Eskimo mean?
Half my subject got chomped. It should read:
Where does “Eskimo” come from?
Could someone fix this please?
According to this site:http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/7/7-300.html
JeffB
January 24, 2001, 5:01pm
4
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language :
The claim that Eskimo is offensive is based primarily on a popular but disputed etymology tracing its origin to an Abenaki word meaning “eaters of raw meat.” Though modern linguists speculate that the term actually derives from a Montagnais word referring to the manner of lacing a snowshoe, the matter remains undecided, and meanwhile many English speakers have learned to perceive Eskimo as a derogatory term invented by unfriendly outsiders in scornful reference to their neighbors’ unsophisticated eating habits.
And from alt-usage-english :
Goddard writes: “In spite of the tenacity of the belief, both among Algonquian speakers and in the anthropological and general literature […] that Eskimo means ‘raw-meat eaters’, this explanation fits only the cited Ojibwa forms (containing Proto-Algonquian *ashk- ‘raw’ and *po- ‘eat’) and cannot be correct for the presumed Montagnais source of the word Eskimo itself. […] The Montagnais word awassimew (of which ay- is a reduplication) and its unreduplicated Attikamek cognate exactly match Montagnais assimew , Ojibwa ashkime ‘she nets a snowshoe’, and an origin from a form meaning ‘snowshoe-netter’ could be considered if the original Montagnais application (presumably before Montagnais contact with Eskimos) were to Algonquians.”
Both the on-line editions of the OED and Webster’s Unabridge still list the “eaters of raw flesh” as the etymology of eskimo .
Many thanks to those who replied and to the topic fixer. My knowledge is increased.
