Ishmaelite

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham in biblical tradition ; a person cast out from society or regarded as an outsider
2. One who traces ancestry to Ishmael, Abraham's first son according to scripture ; someone shunned or alienated from their community
3. A member of the genealogical line of Ishmael in biblical history ; an individual treated as a social outcast or rejected by mainstream society

Etymology: Ishmael, the son of Abraham in the Hebrew Bible, was cast out into the wilderness with his mother Hagar, and in the centuries that followed his name became a label for outsiders. The term "Ishmaelite" is simply Ishmael with the suffix "-ite", which English took from Latin "-ita" and "-ites", originally from Greek "-itēs". That ending marks a person belonging to or descended from someone, the same pattern seen in "Israelite" or "Canaanite". The sense of the word was shaped less by its grammar than by the biblical story itself. Ishmael was treated in tradition as the ancestor of the Arab peoples, so "Ishmaelite" came to name descendants of Ishmael in that sense, and it was also used more loosely to mean a wanderer or outcast who has no settled place. The word therefore carries the figure of a son sent away from his father's household.

Synonyms: outcast, pariah