Etymology

cosmopolitanism

C3O1S1M3O1P3O1L1I1T1A1N1I1S1M3

Today it means: The idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

From cosmopolitan + -ism. The sense referring obliquely to Jewishness comes from the long era in which all Jews lived in the Jewish diaspora because Jews had been banished from the ancient Jewish homeland and no new homeland yet existed. In Soviet use it was rooted in fear of transnationalism generally but took on coded or dogwhistle antisemitic qualities that were not explicitly separable from the generality.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.