Meaning & use

Semitic

adjective·Academic

Relating to a family of Middle Eastern languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, or to the peoples who speak them.

See it in a sentence

Aramaic and Hebrew both belong to the Semitic language family spoken across the ancient Near East.

Scholars study Semitic grammar to compare how Arabic and Hebrew verbs are structured.

A note on using this word

Often misspelled 'semetic'; capitalize it, since it derives from the proper noun 'Shem'. In 'anti-Semitic', it refers specifically to Jewish people.

Words with a similar meaning

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