Editing Caste (section)

==Etymology==
The English word ''caste'' ({{IPAc-en|k|ɑː|s|t|,_|k|æ|s|t}}) derives from the Spanish and Portuguese {{lang|es|[[casta]]}}, which, according to the [[John Minsheu]]'s Spanish dictionary (1569), means "race, lineage, tribe or breed".<ref name=oed-caste>{{Cite OED|caste|id=28546}}</ref> The Portuguese and Spanish word  "casta" originated in [[Gothic language|Gothic]] "kasts" - "group of animals". The word entered the languages of the [[Iberian Peninsula]] with the sense "type of animal," and soon developed into "race of men" and later "class, condition of men".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Solodow |first=Joseph B. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q6UgAwAAQBAJ |title=Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages |date=21 January 2010 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-139-48471-8 |pages=189 |language=en}}</ref>  When the Spanish colonised the [[New World]], they used the word to mean a 'clan or lineage'. It was, however, the Portuguese, the first Europeans to reach India by sea in 1498,  to first employ {{lang|pt|casta}} in the primary modern sense of the English word 'caste' when they applied it to the thousands of endogamous, hereditary Indian social groups they encountered.<ref name=oed-caste/><ref name=pitt-rivers>{{cite book |last=Pitt-Rivers |first=Julian |editor-first=T. O. |editor-last=Beidelman |title=The translation of culture essays to E.E. Evans-Pritchard |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f509AAAAIAAJ&pg=231 |year=1971 |publisher=Tavistock |location=London, UK |pages=231–256 |chapter=On the word 'caste' |id=GGKEY:EC3ZBGF5QC9}}</ref> The use of the spelling ''caste'', with this latter meaning, is first attested in English in 1613.<ref name=oed-caste/> In the Latin American context, the term ''caste'' is sometimes used to describe the ''[[casta]]'' system of racial classification, based on whether a person was of pure European, Indigenous or African descent, or some mix thereof, with the different groups being placed in a racial hierarchy; however, despite the etymological connection between the Latin American ''casta'' system and South Asian caste systems (the former giving its name to the latter), it is controversial to what extent the two phenomena are really comparable.<ref>{{cite book |last=Vinson |first=Ben |title=Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2018 |isbn=978-1-107-02643-8}}</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2024}}