Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Philistine |
PhilistineAdjective1. Smug and ignorant and indifferent or hostile to artistic and cultural values. Noun1. A person who is uninterested in intellectual pursuits. 2. A non-Semitic inhabitant of ancient Philistia. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "philistine" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1517. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Satire | PHILISTINE, n. One whose mind is the creature of its environment, following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment. He is sometimes learned, frequently prosperous, commonly clean and always solemn. Source: Devil's Dictionary. |
19th Century Satire | In Bible times, one who worried the children of Israel; today, one who worries only himself. From Grk. phloios, bark, and tino, to punish. One who barks to punish. Source: Foolish Dictionary, 1904. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The historic Philistines were a people that inhabited the southern coast of Palestine around the time of the arrival of the Israelites. They are spoken of by Amos (9:7) and Jeremiah (47:4) as related to Caphtor, which is probably Crete. They are described in the Old Testament as people that settled Southern Cannan prior to the Hebrews' arrival there from the North East.The Philistines are called Pulsata or Pulista on the Egyptian monuments; the land of the Philistines (Philistia) being termed Palastu and Pilista in the Assyrian inscriptions. They occupied the five cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath, along the coastal strip of southwestern Palestine, which belonged to Egypt up to the closing days of the Nineteenth Dynasty. The occupation took place during the reign of Rameses III of the Twentieth Dynasty. It has been suggested that the Philistines formed part of the great naval confederacy, the 'Sea Peoples', that attacked Egypt from the late 19th Dynasty. Though eventually repulsed by that Pharaoh, he was, according to the theory, apparently unable to dislodge them from their settlements in Palestine.
This powerful tribe made frequent incursions against the Hebrews. There was almost perpetual war between them. They sometimes held the tribes, especially the southern tribes, in servitude; at other times they were defeated with great slaughter. The Philistine cities were ruled by seranim, "lords", who acted together for the common good of the nation. After their defeat by the Israelite King David, kings replaced the seranim, and their history is of individual cities, and not of a people. Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon eventually conquered all of Syria and Palestine, and the Philistine cities became part of the Neo-Babylonian empire. Subsequently the cities were under the control of Persians, Greeks, and Romans.
The Philistines long held a monopoly on iron smithing, a skill they probably acquired during their conquests in Anatolia.
They are called Allophyli, "foreigners," in the Septuagint, and in the Books of Samuel they are spoken of as uncircumcised. It would therefore appear that they were not of the Semitic race, though after their establishment in Palestine they adopted the Semitic language of the country. From Philistia the name of the land of the Philistines came to be extended to the whole of "Palestine." The theory that the Sea Peoples were composed of Greek-speaking tribes has been developed even further to postulate that the Philistines originated in either western Anatolia or the Greek pennisula though the biblical sources are unanimous that they were descended from Egypt (Mizraim).
British writers of the 19th century and very early 20th century sometimes referred to the Arabs of Palestine as "Philistines". This was apparently not due to a belief in a strong connection with the ancient Philistines, but merely reflects the understanding that "Philistine" is the correct word for "native of "Palestine".
The word philistine (q.v.), in non-historical usage, refers to people exhibiting cultural intolerance or a restrictive moral code, unappreciative of wider ideas.
Further Reading
- National Geographic, January 2001, article "Ancient Ashkelon," pp. 66-90.
- Paper of the Phlistines
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Philistines."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Philistinism affords a contrast to Bohemianism, as the character of a smugly conventional bourgeois social group perceived to lack all the desirably soulful 'bohemian' characteristics, especially an artistic temperament and a broad cultural horizon open to the avant-garde. To the chosen few, the 'Philistines' embodied a smug, anti-intellectual threatening majority, in the 'culture wars' of the 19th century.A Philistine in Old Testament terms was a pagan inhabitant of the southwestern coastal cities of Canaan, such as Gaza. The Philistines were the neighbors and enemies of the Hebrews. The word came from Hebrew pelishtim, the people of 'Pelesheth' ('Philistia'). The word Philister (Luther's translation) was taken up in German student slang, supposedly first in Jena in the late 17th century, as a dismissive term for the townspeople (compare the American college slang, 'townies,') It is said that at a memorial service for a student killed in a town-gown clash, the minister took for his the text the words of Delilah to Samson,'The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!' .
Jonathan Swift applied the term to a gruff bailiff in a lawsuit, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan applied the term to one of his characters, 'that bloodthirsty Philistine, Sir Lucius O'Trigger,' in The Rivals, 1775, but 'Philistine' really came to have its modern English secondary meaning, of a person deficient in the culture of the Liberal Arts beginning in the 1820s.
Matthew Arnold was the champion of Victorian 'high culture' countering the forces of the Philistines. In his Essays in Criticism (1865) he pointed out (in his essay on the German poet Heinrich Heine) that ' 'Philistine' must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light.' In another context Arnold wrote,'The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich... are just the very people whom we call the Philistines.' From his example, 'Philistine' passed into the enlightened liberal's armament of cultural scorn.
With the general triumph of Philistine anti-culture during the 20th century, the term itself has dropped out of use.
Compare barbarian, boor, churl, vulgarian, yahoo.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Philistinism."
Synonyms: PhilistineSynonyms: anti-intellectual (adj), lowbrow (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Commonalty | Commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary, proletaire, roturier, Mr. Snooks, bourgeois, epicier, Philistine, grisette, demimonde. |
Ignorance | Uninformed, uncultivated, unversed, uninstructed, untaught, uninitiated, untutored, unschooled, misguided, unenlightened; Philistine; behind the age. |
Pedantry; charlatanry, charlatism; Philister, Philistine. | |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Philistine |
| English words defined with "philistine": artful ♦ Dagon, David, Delilah, disingenuous ♦ Goliath ♦ Philister. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "philistine": Achish ♦ Gittite ♦ Sartor Resartus ♦ Witticism ♦ Ziklag. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | You decadent Philistine! (Shanghai Knights; writing credit: Alfred Gough; Miles Millar) And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground (Hoosiers; writing credit: Angelo Pizzo) | |
Movie/TV Titles | A Philistine in Bohemia (1920) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Quotation |
Oscar Wilde | The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Author | Date | Quotation |
Communist Manifesto | 1848 | It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man. (reference) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | WITTICISM, n. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke." |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Philistine" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 77.19% of the time. "Philistine" is used about 57 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 77.19% | 44 | 51,500 |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 17.54% | 10 | 111,207 |
| Noun (proper) | 5.26% | 3 | 202,518 |
| Total | 100.00% | 57 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
the philistine | 61 |
babylon philistine | 3 |
history philistine | 2 |
dothan philistine | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "philistine"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | Filistyn. (various references) | |
Albanian | filistin, antikulturë. (various references) | |
Arabic | غير مستنير, غير مثقف (boorish, uncultivated, uneducated, unlettered, untutored), الفلسطيني القديم. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | филистерски, филистер, филистимлянин, филистимилиански, еснафски (hearty, suburban), еснаф (craft, mystery), просташки (blatant, caddish, jazz, jumped-up, loud, low-minded, oafish, ornery, raffish, rank, rough, rude, savage, swinish, tasteless, underbred, unrefined, vulgar), простак (bounder, buffoon, cad, fellow, hog, lout, oaf, outsider, savage, schmo, schnook, slob, spoon, twerp, vulgarian). (various references) | |
Chinese | 鄙俚 (vulgar), 鄙俗 (vulgar). (various references) | |
Czech | šosák (fogy). (various references) | |
Dutch | Filistijn, Filistýn. (various references) | |
Esperanto | filiŝto. (various references) | |
French | philistin, béotien. (various references) | |
German | spießbürger (BabbittUS, bourgeois), spießer (babbitt, bourgeois, fawn, Square), philister. (various references) | |
Greek | σκαιόσ (awkward, curmudgeonly, lubberly, snippy, tactless), φιλισταίοσ. (various references) | |
Hebrew | פלשתי, חסר תרבות (low brow, uncivilized). (various references) | |
Hungarian | nyárspolgár (Babbitt, lowbrow, petty bourgeois), filiszteus, szűklátókörű, nyárspolgári (lowbrow, philistinism), maradi (backward, behindhand, hidebound, hide-bound, obscurantist, retrograde, stick in the mud), kispolgári (middle class, middle-class), kispolgár (petty bourgeois), filiszter. (various references) | |
Italian | filisteo. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ilistinephay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | burguês (bourgeois, burgess, burgher, citizen, middleclass, middleclass citizen). (various references) | |
Romanian | mic-burghez mãrginit, filistin, duşman necruţãtor. (various references) | |
Russian | филистерский, филистин, филистимлянин, палестинец (palestinian). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | sitničav (hairsplitting, pedantic, petty, small minded), filistinjanin, filistarski. (various references) | |
Spanish | filisteo. (various references) | |
Swedish | kälkborgerlig, kälkborgare, filiströs, filister, filisteisk, filiste, filisté, brackig (straight), bracka (bounder, cad, philistinee, philistinize). (various references) | |
Turkish | filistinli (palestinian), filistin kabilesinden kimse, cahil ve zevksiz adam, cahil ve zevksiz. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | філістерський, філістер, філістимський, філістимлянин, обиватель, міщанський. (various references) | |
Vietnamese | người tầm thường (cipher, jack sprat, nobody, nothing, scrub), kẻ ph m phu tục tử. (various references) | |
Welsh | Philistiad. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Classical Hebrew | 200 BCE-Modern | Pelishtim,. (various references) |
| German | 100 BCE-Modern | Philister. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Language | Date | Source | 1 Samuel Chapter 17, Verse 10 |
| Greek (transliterated) | 250 BC | Septuagint | Kai eipen o allofuloV idou egw wneidisa thn parataxin israhl shmeron en th hmera tauth dote moi andra kai monomachsomen amfoteroi |
| Latin | 405 | Vulgate | Et aiebat Philistheus ego exprobravi agminibus Israhelis hodie date mihi virum et ineat mecum singulare certamen |
| Middle English | 1395 | Wyclif | And the Philistee seide, I haue yeue reproof to the cumpanyes of Yrael to day; yyueth to me a man, and go he yn with me a synguler strijf. |
| Jacobean English | 1611 | King James | And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together. |
| Victorian English | 1833 | Webster | And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together. |
| Basic English | 1964 | Ogden | And the Philistine said, I have put to shame the armies of Israel this day; give me a man so that we may have a fight together. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | 1 Samuel Chapter 17, Verse 10 |
| Cebuano | Ug ang Filistehanon miingon: Ako nagahagit sa mga panon sa kasundalohan sa Israel niining adlawa; hatagi ako ug usa ka tawo, aron kami magakaaway. |
| Croatian | Još je Filistejac rekao: "Ja sam danas izazvao Izraelove bojne redove. Dajte mi èovjeka da se ogledamo u dvoboju!" |
| Danish | Yderligere sagde Filisteren: "I Dag har jeg hånet Israels Slagrækker; kom med en Mand, så vi kan kæmpe sammen!" |
| Dutch | Verder zeide de Filistijn: Ik heb heden de slagorden van Israel gehoond, zeggende: Geeft mij een man, dat wij te zamen strijden! |
| Finnish | Ja filistealainen sanoi vielä: "Minä olen tänä päivänä häväissyt Israelin taistelurivit. Antakaa tänne mies, niin me taistelemme keskenämme." |
| French | Le Philistin dit encore: Je jette en ce jour un défi l`armée d`Israël! Donnez-moi un homme, et nous nous battrons ensemble. |
| German | Und der Philister sprach: Ich habe heutigestages dem Heer Israels Hohn gesprochen: Gebt mir einen und laßt uns miteinander streiten. |
| Hungarian | Monda továbbá a Filiszteus: Én gyalázattal illetém a mai napon Izráel seregét, állítsatok azért ki ellenem egy embert, hogy megvívjunk egymással. |
| Indonesian-Bahasa Sehari-hari | Sekarang juga, kutantang tentara Israel; pilihlah seorang untuk bertanding melawan aku!" |
| Indonesian-Terjemahan Lama | Dan lagi kata orang Filistin itu: Bahwa pada hari ini aku sudah menghinakan segala balatentara orang Israel; berikanlah sekarang seorang laki-laki kepadaku, supaya kami berperang bersama seorang. |
| Italian | Il Filisteo aggiungeva: «Io ho lanciato oggi una sfida alle schiere d'Israele. Datemi un uomo e combatteremo insieme». |
| Maori | I mea ano taua Pirihitini, Tenei taku whakatara inaianei mo nga ngohi a Iharaira; homai he tangata ki ahau kia whawhai maua. |
| Norwegian | Så sa filisteren: Idag har jeg hånet Israels fylking; kom hit med en mann, så vi kan stride med hverandre! |
| Rumanian | Filisteanul a mai zis: ,,Arunc astqzi o ocarq asupra owtirii lui Israel! Dayi-mi un om, ca sq mq lupt cu el.`` |
| Swedish | Och filistéen sade ytterligare: "Jag har i dag smädat Israels här. Skaffen nu hit någon, så att vi få strida med varandra! |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "philistine": philistines. (additional references) | |
| |
"Philistine" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: philastine, philistene, philistime, philistin, phillestine, phillistene, phillistine, philosit, Philpstoun. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "e-h-i-i-i-l-n-p-s-t" | |
-2 letters: hiplines, nihilist. | |
-3 letters: hipline, ileitis, liniest, piniest, pinites, pintles, plenish, plenist, plinths, shilpit, splenii, tiepins. | |
-4 letters: elints, enlist, inlets, instep, instil, lipins, listen, nihils, pensil, pinite, pintle, pistil, pities, plinth, seniti, sileni, silent, spilth, spinel, spinet, splent, spline, splint, stipel, theins, tiepin, tinsel. | |
-5 letters: elint, heils, heist, helps, hents, hilts, hints, inept, inlet, inset. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-h-i-i-i-l-n-p-s-t" | |
+1 letter: philistines. | |
+4 letters: prehensilities. | |
+5 letters: epithelizations, hypersalinities, inhospitalities, punishabilities, rehospitalizing. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Quotations: Familiar 7. Quotations: Historic 8. Quotations: Non-fiction | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Expressions: Internet 11. Translations: Modern 12. Translations: Ancient | 13. Bible Trace 14. Derivations 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
