nation

英文词源

nation

nation: [13] Etymologically a nation is a ‘breed’ or ‘stock’. It is one of a wide range of English words that go back ultimately to Latin nāscī ‘be born’, and its immediate source is the derived noun nātiō. This literally meant ‘that which has been born’, a ‘breed’, but was soon used by extension for a ‘species’ or ‘race’, and then by further narrowing down for a ‘race of people, nation’.

The notion of ‘common ancestry’ underlying the term survived into English, but over the centuries has gradually been overtaken by the political concept of an organized territorial unit. The derivative nationality dates from the 17th century.
=> native

nation (n.)

c. 1300, from Old French nacion "birth, rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland" (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio) "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe," literally "that which has been born," from natus, past participle of nasci "be born" (Old Latin gnasci; see genus). Political sense has gradually predominated, but earliest English examples inclined toward the racial meaning "large group of people with common ancestry." Older sense preserved in application to North American Indian peoples (1640s). Nation-building first attested 1907 (implied in nation-builder).