Human

How to spell human

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce human

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does human mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or characteristic of people as a species.
2. nounA person, as a member of the species Homo sapiens.

Human in a sentence

• adjective

  The report examined the human cost of the long factory shifts.

• noun

  The robot could carry far more than any human could lift.

• adjective

  Every design flaw was traced back to simple human error.

• noun

  The survey asked whether one human alone could finish the task.

Where does human come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin humanus, meaning 'of or belonging to people', an adjective closely tied to homo, the Latin noun for a human being. Many scholars connect homo to humus, the Latin word for 'earth' or 'ground', giving the appealing sense of human beings as 'the earthly ones' shaped from the soil. English took the word in during the late Middle Ages through Old French humain, and for a long time the spellings human and humane were used interchangeably for both the literal and the moral senses. By the 1700s writers had split the pair, reserving humane for kindness and compassion while human covered simple membership of the species. That shared ancestry is why the silent connection between human, humane, and even humble can be a helpful memory hook, and it explains why the unstressed second syllable (the schwa in the '-man' ending) is the spot writers must take care with.

How the word is built

• hum- (from Latin humanus, related to homo: man, person)
• -an (adjective/noun suffix)