Hottentot

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Dutch Hottentot, its first known use in Dutch being in the 1650s. The third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary concluded in 2008 that hottentot came into English in the seventeenth century. But it finds that no definitive etymology of Dutch hottentot can so far be given:

A very large number of different etymologies for the name have been suggested ... The most frequently repeated suggestion ... is that the word was a spec. use of a formally identical Dutch word meaning ‘stammerer, stutterer’, which came to be applied to the Khoekhoe and San people on account of the clicks characteristic of their languages. However, evidence for the earlier general use appears to be lacking. Another frequent suggestion is that the people were so named after one or more words which early European visitors to southern Africa heard in chants accompanying dances of the Khoekhoe or San ... but the alleged chant is rendered in different ways in different 17th-cent. sources, and some of the accounts may be based on hearsay rather than first-hand knowledge.

It does seem clear, however, that hottentot was an exonym, that is, not the Khoikhoi's own name for themselves but rather a foreign term applied to them.

Noun

Hottentot (plural Hottentots)

1. (archaic, now offensive) A 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.

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

     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.

2. (archaic, loosely, now offensive) A member of the broader Khoisan group of peoples.
   • 1978, Patricia Storrar, Portrait of Plettenberg Bay:

     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 […]

   • 2007, Frontiers:

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

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

     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.

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

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

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

Synonyms

• (person): Khoekhoe, Khoikhoi, Khoi

Derived terms

• Hottentot cherry
• Hottentot fig
• Hottentot teal

 

Derived terms

• Hottentot apron
• Hottentot bread
• Hottentot cabbage, Hottentot's cabbage (Trachandra)
• Hottentot's cherry
• Hottentot fig, Hottentot's fig (Carpobrotus edulis, formerly Mesembryanthemum edulus)
• Hottentot god, Hottentot's god
• Hottentots Holland Mountains

Translations

a member of the Khoekhoe people — see also Khoekhoe

• Afrikaans: Hotnot
• Czech: Hotentot (cs) m
• Dutch: Hottentot (nl) m
• Finnish: hottentotti (fi)
• German: Hottentotte (de) m, Hottentottin (de) f
• Italian: ottentotto (it) m, ottentotta (it) f
• Latin: (in the plural) Hottentotti m
• Russian: готтенто́т (ru) m (gottentót)
• Spanish: hotentote m

fish of the genus Pachymetopon

Proper noun

Hottentot

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

   Synonyms: Hottentot language, Khoekhoe

   • 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:

     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.

Derived terms

• Hottentotism

Translations

language of the Khoekhoe — see also Khoekhoe

• Finnish: khoi
• German: Hottentottisch n, hottentottische Sprache f
• Italian: ottentotto (it) m
• Spanish: hotentote m

See also

• Khoikhoi on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Sparidae on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Pachymetopon on Wikispecies.Wikispecies

References

• Webster's International Dictionary 1902.
• Jean Bradford: A dictionary of South African English: Oxford 1978.

Dutch

Alternative forms

• Hottento (obsolete)

Etymology

Likely formed in reference to the click sounds of Khoekhoe. Already attested in Van Riebeeck's journal in 1652.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɦɔ.tə(n)ˌtɔt/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Hot‧ten‧tot

Noun

Hottentot m (plural Hottentotten, diminutive Hottentotje n)

1. (now offensive) a Khoekhoe person, a member of the native people of southwestern Africa [from mid 17th c.]

   Synonyms: Khoi, Khoikhoi

Synonyms

• Khoikhoi

Derived terms

• hottentottaling
• Hottentottententoonstelling
• hottentottententententoonstelling
• Hottentottin

Descendants

• Afrikaans: Hotnot
• → English: Hottentot