Khoisan, plural noun
- Forms:
- Also Xhoisan.
1. The Khoikhoi and San peoples collectively; Hottentot noun sense 3 a; cf. Boschman Hottentot. Also attributive. See also Capoid noun.
- Note:
- See note at San sense 1.
1930 I. Schapera KhoiSan Peoples 5The term Khoisan, recently coined by Schultze to denote the racial stock to which the Bushmen and the Hottentots belong, has..been accepted..as a convenient generic name for these people. The term is compounded of the names Khoi-Khoin, by which the Hottentots call themselves, and San, applied by the Hottentots to the Bushmen.
[1994 ‘Hogarth’ in Sunday Times 18 Sept. 22PAC general secretary Benny Alexander’s new name !Khoisan X, might not be as politically correct as he thinks it is...His new name translates roughly into poor rascal. It is derived from the Nama word Khoi, meaning simply person, and their derogatory term, San, for someone who owns no cattle, or is a rascal. The name is mired in racist and colonial overtones, being a portmanteau word coined by a German anthropologist to lump together people once known as Hottentots or Bushmen.]
2. The group of languages or dialects spoken by these peoples; Hottentot noun sense 3 b. Also attributive. See also Khoikhoi sense 2, San sense 2.
1930 I. Schapera KhoiSan Peoples 438The vocabularies of the Khoisan languages are necessarily very restricted along certain lines.
1990 Weekly Mail 21 Sept. 7The American Committee on Africa took..exception...Why, they ask, is there ‘no mention of the..extermination of San and Khoisan-speaking peoples and cultures’.
The group of languages or dialects spoken by these peoples; Hottentot noun sense 3 b. Also attributive.
- Derivatives:
- Hence Khoisaniform adjective; Khoisanoid adjective and noun; see also Capoid adjective, Gariepine.1971 P.V. Tobias in Std Encycl. of Sn Afr. III. 95The Capoids comprise the Bushman and, in a mixed state, the Hottentots, Korana and Sandawe of Tanganyika. Thus the term covers the congeries of people commonly grouped as the Khoisanoid or Khoisaniform race or complex of races. The Capoids or Khoisanoids were formerly regarded as one of the five major subdivisions of living mankind.1991 J. Coulter in Weekend Post 4 May (Leisure) 3These unique African people are the descendants of the ancient Capoid or Khoisanoid division of man.
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