humanity means humankind; human beings as a group. It carries an Arena rating of 1483, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, humanity ranks #2,082 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #5,310 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #5,448 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #6,580 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
humanity is pronounced /hjuˈmænɪti/.
Why “humanity” is a great word
The collective human species, the essential condition of being human, or the compassionate dimension of the human spirit. From Middle English humanyte, from Old French humanité, from Latin hūmānitās ('human nature, kindness'), from hūmānus ('human'). Unlike 'mankind,' which names the race itself with a heavy, historical weight, or 'inhumanity,' its stark and pitiless antonym, 'humanity' contains the potential for both our shared state and our highest grace. It is the palm pressed to a fevered forehead, the shared crust of bread in a famine, and the stubborn refusal to accept that suffering is merely inevitable—the fragile, persistent architecture of care we build amid the noise of survival.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English humanyte, humanite, humanitye, from Old French humanité, from Latin hūmānitās. By surface analysis, human or humane + -ity. Partly displaced mankind, from Old English mancynn (literally “human race”).
noun
- Humankind; human beings as a group.
- The human condition or nature.
- The quality of being benevolent; humane traits of character; humane qualities or aspects.e.g.“Think of that; by that sweet girl that old man had a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities!” — 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Ship”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 90:
- Any academic subject belonging to the humanities.e.g.“Philosophy is a humanity while psychology is a science.”
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.