Aryans

Noun

Aryan (plural Aryans)

1. (informal, Nazism or white supremacy) A person of Caucasian (white / Northern European) ethnicity; A white non-Jew, in the broadest sense, or more narrowly defined as people of Germanic descent.
   • This short sketch of the changes that take place among those races that are only the depositories of a culture also furnishes a picture of the development and the activity and the disappearance of those who are the true founders of culture on this earth, namely the Aryans themselves.1925–26, Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translation from German to English by James Murphy, 1939
2. (US, broadly, euphemistic, informal) A Caucasian racist, often one who is an Aryan in the first sense.
   • Cal tried to think of words that would convey Wolfgang Stahl to the ears and hands of a woman who’d never seen him and never, until now, had to imagine him.
     […]
     ‘Why not . . . why not think of your chap as a type? Tell me what type you’d sort of put him into.’
     ‘Sort of?’
     ‘You know . . ....2004, John Lawton, Bluffing Mr. Churchill
3. (broadly, dated) An Indo-European, a Proto-Indo-European.
   • We have seen that when the Goths first entered Roman territory they were driven on by a vast migration of the Asiatic Huns. These wild and hideous tribes then […] appeared upon the Rhine, and in enormous numbers penetrated Gaul. No people had yet understood them, none had even checked their career....1905, Rossiter Johnson, LL.D., chief editor, The Great Events by Famous Historians, volume IV
4. (dated) A subdivision of the Caucasian racial and linguistic grouping, when that grouping is defined as consisting of Aryans, Semites, and Hamites.
   • [The] Caucasian race includes two sub-races, — the Xantho-chroic and Melanochroic of Huxley. The seat of this race is Europe, northern Africa, and southwestern Asia, its linguistic division being into Aryans, Semites, and Hamites.1892, Charles Morris, The Aryan Race: Its Origins and Its Achievements
5. (dated, historical) Synonym of Indo-Iranian (“member of any peoples speaking an Indo-Iranian language.”)

   Synonyms:

   Indo-Iranian

   1. (broadly, dated, historical) An Indo-Aryan.
      • The theories of advocates of an autochthonous origin of the Indo-Aryans (always called "Aryans") range from (1) a mild version, insisting on the origin of the Ṛgvedic Indo-Aryans in the Panjab, the "autochthonous" or indigenous school…2001, Michael Witzel, Autochthonous Aryans?

See all 14 meanings of Aryan