Yeah, I wondered a bit about this one when I wrote the entry.
You could argue that its religious in the sense of a bunch of co-religionists as they would have been seen by the unfortunates in their path but I don’t think I’m the only one struggling to work out exactly what the OP was after.
It’s not really a noun, but ‘to run amok’ is sort of parallel to ‘berserker’; the early use of ‘amok’ was as a noun referring to a Malaysian or Indonesian who experienced a period of brooding followed by sudden frenzied aggression.
Another example would be ‘going postal’ to describe a sudden violent outburst, although post office workers aren’t really an ethnic or religious group.
We go down here, we’re in a different huge thread. Granted, disdain and deprecation for some quality is inherent in the very etymology of many of these (not “goyim” though), or has acquired it (“goyim” in other discrete contexts; a jillion of the others).
Haole, which apparently just means “foreigner.” It did not apply to a specific people or ethnic group before being applied to all non-native Hawaiians, and so would not fit here.
:smack: Figured with us smarties that would be early early on. Too quick scan.
Isn’t this exactly OP, which I was trying to say in my not-all-that-important not to which you are responding (with an appropriate addition, in how I understand it).
I mean, yes, there are literal whirling dervishes, just as there were literal Thugees (thugs) and literal Assasins. In all three cases, a literal term for a cultural group was generalized into a figurative one denoting something different but still vaguely tied to the original meaning.
Well, the word “baluba” is (or was) used in Ireland to mean a wild or savage person. Hyperactive children running and screaming could be said to be “acting like balubas”. I often heard it said with the stress on the first syllable: “BAluba”. I presume the correct pronunciation is “baLUba”.
Of course it was a racist usage, but they were simpler times and the chances of ever meeting an actual Baluba person seemed remote.
The word entered the vocabulary as a result of an incident in 1960 where a platoon of Irish soldiers in the Congo was ambushed by a large group of Baluba warriors armed with bows and arrows. 9 of the Irish (and an unknown number of the Baluba) were killed.