quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- Caucasian (adj.)




- 1807, from Caucasus Mountains, between the Black and Caspian seas; applied to the "white" race 1795 (in German) by German anthropologist Johann Blumenbach, because its supposed ancestral homeland lay there; since abandoned as a historical/anthropological term. (See Aryan).
- Caucasian (n.)




- "resident or native of the Caucasus," 1843; see Caucasus + -ian. Meaning "one of the 'white' race" is from 1958 (earlier Caucasoid, 1956).
- Caucasus (n.)




- mountain range between Europe and the Middle East, from Latin Caucasus, from Greek kaukasis, said by Pliny ("Natural History," book six, chap. XVII) to be from a Scythian word similar to kroy-khasis, literally "(the mountain) ice-shining, white with snow." But possibly from a Pelasgian root *kau- meaning "mountain."