Unless you're one of the weirdos who thinks animals are people too, Kalleh's definition is the same as mine. I imagine that those weirdos didn't exist until relatively recently, so I suppose numbers have gone up slightly. Going back further, I suppose some racists felt that black people and slaves were not people.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I ask because in times past "people" seemed to be selective in the USA. In the Decleration of Independence it says, "We, the people..." but the US constitution did, indeed, consider slaves to be 3/5th "people," and women are not accorded roles beyond chattel in many parts of the world even now. For many years English and US law allowed only land owners to vote. Does anyone have an 18th Century dictionary to prove or disprove my feeling that "people" has become more inclusive in the Western world in the last three centuries?
Wow. You are right! I just went to an online Dictionary of the English Language (Samuel Johnson) from 1768, and the definition of people is: A nation; those who compose a community. The commonality; not the princes or nobles. Persons of a particular class. Men, or persons in general.
'Person' is defined in Johnson as "Individual or particular man or woman" plus a number of other sub-definitions which also use 'man or woman'. 'Man' is first glossed as "Human being" and only as a secondary definition "Not a woman". Third is "Not a boy".
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Those definitions of 'Man' just show some of the uses. In the first definition it can mean 'human beings', men, women and children. By contrast 'man' can be used to differentiate a male from as woman, just as it can be used to differentiate an adult male from a boy. It's a slippery word, isn't it?
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
WRT the intent of my question, I recall Gloria Steinem saying that feminism is the revolutionary notion that women are people too.
I wonder also about the intent of the US Second Ammendment, wherein it states ,"...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Just any old people?
The OED says "Men or women; men, women, and children; folk" as in "The paleys ful of peple up and doun, Heere thre, ther ten" from The Knight's Tale. But how do we know this is referring to women as well as men?
That is of course the current definition, but Geoff's question is about the past, hence the references to Johnson's dictionary.
It is certainly possible that folk in past centuries had a less inclusive definition; were slaves counted for instance? Women could not vote - did that exclude them as 'people' as well? Even now there might be arguments - is a human embryo a person? Is a new-born baby?
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The book of Genesis recounts the deity's breathing into Adam the breath of life, thereby causing him to be a "living soul." A pretty good argument supporting Kalleh's statement above, but the myth of woman's creation differs. Hmmmm... Patriarchal religion gets us into all kinds of difficulty!
