anthropology

Etymology

From New Latin anthropologia, from Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos, “human, mankind”) + -λογία (-logía). By surface analysis, anthropo- + -logy.

noun

1. The holistic scientific and social study of humanity, mainly using ethnography as its method.
   According to anthropology, there are six basic patterns of kinship terminology (i.e., "kin naming systems"): Sudanese, Hawaiian, Eskimo, Crow, Omaha, and Iroquois.
   Whilst History endeavours to represent the various phases of civilized life to the fullest extent, the interest of Anthropology rests chiefly upon the general features and the greatest differences in the various forms of human life; for as regards the latter science, these diversities form the most important and characteristic part, and we should have but a one-sided conception of man, if our notions of him were only derived from the history of civilization without taking into consieration the resquisite supplement arising from the study of uncivilized nations, and of man in a primative state. 1863, J. Frederick Collingwood (ed), Introduction to Anthropology (from Theodor Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vol I (1959)) pp 8-9
2. (theology) The study of humanity in its relation to the divine, as in Christian anthropology.