Horites

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An ancient people who lived in the region of Seir and are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, often identified with the Hurrians
2. The name given in the Hebrew Bible to an early population inhabiting Seir before the descendants of Esau took over their land
3. A group of ancient inhabitants of Seir, named in the Old Testament and generally linked to the Hurrian peoples of the Near East

Etymology: The Horites were, according to the Hebrew Bible, a people who lived in the hill country of Seir, the region south-east of the Dead Sea that later became the land of Edom. The name is the plural of "Horite," and it appears in the biblical genealogies and narratives of Genesis and Deuteronomy as the inhabitants who were displaced or absorbed by the descendants of Esau. Because the Horites are known almost entirely from these texts, the term has no independent history in English beyond its use for that biblical people. It was borrowed from Hebrew through the translation tradition of the Bible, so the English word carries the same meaning it had in the Scriptures: a named group of Seir's earlier inhabitants rather than any broader or figurative sense.