hottentot

plural hottentots

1. Any of several fish of the genus Pachymetopon, in the family Sparidae.

plural Hottentots

1. archaicoffensiveA member of the Khoekhoe group of peoples.

   1798-1801, Lady Ann Barnard, Letters and Journals I was told that the Hottentots were uncommonly ugly and disgusting, but I do not think them so bad. Their features are small and their cheekbones immense, but they have a kind expression and countenance.

   1 more example

   They were called "Bushmen" because they led a nomadic life based on hunting and gathering in bushveld. The first written appearance of the Khoisan people, represented by the Bushmen and the Hottentots, dates back to the tenth century.

   2014, Jirō Tanaka, The Bushmen: A Half-century Chronicle of Transformations in Hunter-gatherer Life and Ecology, Apollo Books, →ISBN, page 2

2. archaicbroadlyoffensiveA member of the broader Khoisan group of peoples.

   The Hottentots (Khoisan) of either sex, young and old, who were in the boor's service, always choose to sleep in the fireplace.

   2007, Frontiers

   3 more examples

   The Hottentots (Khoisan peoples) once an independent nation but whose simple tribal system had disintegrated rapidly as they were relentlessly displaced from their traditional grazing grounds and driven deep into the still uninhabited interior […]

   1978, Patricia Storrar, Portrait of Plettenberg Bay

   The Dutch colonists in this frontier district, two years after an uprising of the Khoisan (“Hottentots”), were wary of the newly installed British regime at the Cape of Good Hope.

   2012, Richard Elphick, The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa, University of Virginia Press, →ISBN

   First, in 1828, all legal disabilities on the free people of colour, particularly the Khoisan [Hottentots], were removed by Ordinance 50.

   2014, Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930, Cornell University Press, →ISBN

   Synonyms: Khoekhoe, Khoikhoi, Khoi

1. The language of the Khoekhoe, remarkable for its clicks.

   Ive tried her with every […] possible sort of sound that a human being can make— […] Continental dialects, African dialects, Hottentot […] clicks, things it took me years to get hold of; and […] she picks them up like a shot, right away, as if she had […] been at it all her life.

   1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC, Act III, pages 157–158

   Synonyms: Hottentot language, Khoekhoe