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# The BFD Word of the Day
- URL: https://goodoil.news/the-bfd-word-of-the-day-411/
- Published: 2021-03-12T17:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-02-12T00:45:37.000Z
- Author: David Theobald
- Tags: General, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 02:14

The word for today is…

diaspora (noun) –  
1 capitalized, Judaism a : the Jews living outside Palestine or modern Israel  
b : the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside ancient Palestine after the Babylonian exile  
c : the area outside ancient Palestine settled by Jews  
2a : people settled far from their ancestral homelands  
b : the place where these people live  
c : the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland

Source : [Merriam -Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diaspora?ref=goodoil.news)

Etymology : Until recently diaspora was thought to be a fairly new word in English to describe a very old thing (its first, and principal, meaning relates to the settling of the Jewish people outside of Palestine after the Babylonian exile thousands of years ago). However, recent research has found that the word is quite a bit older than previously thought. It can be found as far back as 1594, in a translation of Lambert Daneau’s A Fruitfull Commentarie vpon the Twelue Small Prophets: “This scattering abrode of the Iewes, as it were an heauenly sowing, fell out after their returne from the captiuitie of Babylon … they are called Diaspora, that is, a scattering or sowing abrode.” Diaspora is descended from the Greek word diaspeirein, meaning “to scatter, spread about.”

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