SemIt

Semit, or Semite in its adjectival and noun form, is a historical term used to refer to a person belonging to a Semitic-speaking people or to the Semitic languages. The word derives from the name Shem, a figure in the Hebrew Bible, and was adopted in 18th- and 19th-century linguistics to group certain peoples and languages.

In linguistics, Semitic denotes a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Semitic languages include Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Ge'ez, Phoenician, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and related languages, both living and extinct. They are characterized by features such as a tri-consonantal root system and templatic morphology, though these features vary across languages and eras.

Ethnically, "Semite" has been used to describe speakers of Semitic languages and their descendants, but modern scholarship treats ethnicity as separate from language. The term is now largely historical or specialized; in contemporary contexts speakers are identified by specific national or ethnic designations (for example, Arab, Jewish) rather than as a single Semitic group. The term "anti-Semitism" historically denotes prejudice against Jews, a usage that reflects the linguistic roots of the word more than a precise ethnolinguistic category.

Related topics include Semitic languages and Afroasiatic languages.