Homo sapiens

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Translingual

Lectotype of the species Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758, designated by Stearn, 1959. Portrait of Carl Linnaeus by Alexander Roslin, 1775.
Detail from Pioneer 11 spacecraft plaque

Etymology

    From Latin homō (human being) + sapiēns (wise, sensible, judicious).

    Pronunciation

    Proper noun

    Homo sapiens m (plural Homines sapientes, or sometimes Homo sapiens)

    1. A taxonomic species within the family Hominidae – human.
      • 1974, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, “Linguistics and Economics”, in Current Trends in Linguistics, volume XII (in English), part eight, “Linguistics and Adjacent Arts and Sciences”, The Hague: Mouton & Co., section “The homology between linguistic production and material production”, subsection “After utensils and sentences”, subsubsection “Tenth level: Global production”, page 1888:
        A productive unit can be a man, a more or less wide and/or permanent social group, a whole culture; the widest productive unit one can think of is mankind as the totality hominum sapientium.
      • 1992, Bulletin du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (in Latin), page 197:
        Inter species Novae-Caledoniae singularis ob folia parva, chartacea, marginibus valde recurvis (et in sicco et in vivo), ita ut folium quodque pustulam ruptam in calce Hominis sapientis referat.
        Unique among New Caledonian species in its small chartaceous leaves with strongly recurved margins (both in the living plant and in dried specimens) so that each leaf looks like a burst blister on the heel of Homo sapiens.
        (Translation from the same page)
      • 2007, Bronisław Bombała, “In Search of the Sources of Humanity”, in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, editor, Phenomenology of Life from the Animal Soul to the Human Mind (Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research; XCIII) (in English), book I, “In Search of Experience”, supersection “Sources of Humanity”, Springer, →ISBN, section “In Search of the Starting Point of the Anthropogenesis”, page 110:
        One may only suppose that the roots of the “thinking” man go back to the anthropoids from Oligocene, while apes and homonidae were only lateral shells of the anthropogenesis. The same refers to the subspecies of homonidae, which were also lateral shells, replaced by hominis sapientis.
      • 2017, Zygmunt Bauman, “Afterword: From official to “do it yourself” fear”, in State of Fear in a Liquid World (in English), Routledge, →ISBN, page 107:
        Nothingness and eternity can be and indeed are obsessively attempted to be imagined – postulated and/or presumed to exist; they can’t however be visualized. Both stay tenaciously beyond the reach of their sensual equipment as much as remaining in-excisable and un-eliminable from the homini sapienti ruminations.

    Quotations

    For quotations using this term, see Citations:Homo sapiens.

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    English

    Noun

    Homo sapiens

    1. plural of Homo sapien