philistine

The Philistines, Israel's sea-people enemies, became German student slang for the town police and then for the 'townies' outside the university; the word spread through Scandinavia and Central Europe, Carlyle and Matthew Arnold brought it into English for anyone hostile to culture — and the same name, via Greek and Latin, gave Palestine.

Weakest linkCertain

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600 BCEBiblical Hebrew

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