English Dictionary

HUMANKIND

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does humankind mean? 

HUMANKIND (noun)
  The noun HUMANKIND has 1 sense:

1. all of the living human inhabitants of the earthplay

  Familiarity information: HUMANKIND used as a noun is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


HUMANKIND (noun)


Sense 1

Meaning:

All of the living human inhabitants of the earth

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Synonyms:

human beings; human race; humanity; humankind; humans; man; mankind; world

Context example:

she always used 'humankind' because 'mankind' seemed to slight the women

Hypernyms ("humankind" is a kind of...):

group; grouping (any number of entities (members) considered as a unit)

homo; human; human being; man (any living or extinct member of the family Hominidae characterized by superior intelligence, articulate speech, and erect carriage)

Meronyms (members of "humankind"):

people ((plural) any group of human beings (men or women or children) collectively)


 Context examples 


My master told me, “there were some qualities remarkable in the Yahoos, which he had not observed me to mention, or at least very slightly, in the accounts I had given of humankind.”

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Ah, signori, there are the real great men whose names will be held in honor when your soldiers are shown to have been the enemies of humankind.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Yet I have heard you speak so often with broad charity of the fallibility and frailty of humankind.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein!

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

They were stern days, and if the honest soldier, too poor for a ransom, had no prospect of mercy upon the battle-field, what ruth was there for sea robbers, the enemies of humankind, taken in the very deed, with proofs of their crimes still swinging upon their yard-arm.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But I could have easily vindicated humankind from the imputation of singularity upon the last article, if there had been any swine in that country (as unluckily for me there were not), which, although it may be a sweeter quadruped than a Yahoo, cannot, I humbly conceive, in justice, pretend to more cleanliness; and so his honour himself must have owned, if he had seen their filthy way of feeding, and their custom of wallowing and sleeping in the mud.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

“Is there no end then to the wickedness of humankind? He so humble, so aged, so loth to take our money—and yet a villain and a cheat. Whom can we trust or believe in?”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I was indeed treated with much kindness: I was the favourite of a great king and queen, and the delight of the whole court; but it was upon such a foot as ill became the dignity of humankind.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I had not yet been a year in this country before I contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I entered on a firm resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms, in the contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no example or incitement to vice.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)



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