oriental
part of speech
adjective (oriental; Oriental); noun (an Oriental — old-fashioned, offensive)
meaning for a pupil
1) (old-fashioned) From or to do with the countries of East Asia, like China, Japan and Korea. tree →
2) Used in some fixed names for things, like "oriental rug" or "Oriental Shorthair" (a cat breed). tree →
3) From or to do with the wider East, such as India, Persia or Arabia. tree →
sense in the lessons
Interpretation: The writer used it for ideas from the East, and claimed that Jewish thinkers of old mixed such ideas with Greek ones. In the primary lessons: Seen in old books and in names of objects and animals (oriental rugs, the oriental pratincole bird). Today, describing people as "Oriental" is old-fashioned and can be offensive; people prefer "Asian", "East Asian" or the country, such as "Chinese" or "Korean".
examples
- All the other commentaries mentioned above, together with all quotations of other expounders of the same book, contain nothing but a medley of arbitrary, mystical explanations and sophistical distortions of scriptural verses, astrological notions, oriental (Sefer Yetzirah, Kalisch 1877) tree →
- Be this as it may, it is worth while to know the extravagant hypotheses which ancient Jewish philosophers and theologians framed as soon as they began to contemplate and to reason, endeavoring to combine oriental and Greek theories. (Sefer Yetzirah, Kalisch 1877) tree →
- The museum had a room of oriental rugs. tree →
- Old maps called East Asia "the Orient". tree →
- In the old book, the market sold "oriental spices". tree →
- The Oriental Shorthair is a slim cat breed. tree →
- We say "East Asian food" rather than "oriental food" now. tree →
- Calling people "Oriental" is old-fashioned and can be hurtful. tree →
- He is well read, a remarkable Oriental scholar, and has a good judgment. tree →
note
Use with care: for people, say "Asian", "East Asian" or name the country. In US law the word was removed from federal laws in 2016. In names of objects it may still appear.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «oriental» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.