Ishmaelite
Americannoun
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a supposed descendant of Ishmael; a member of a desert people of Old Testament times
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rare an outcast
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of Ishmaelite
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
There was less of the Ishmaelite about Whitman than about Thoreau, Borrow, or Jefferies; but the man whose company he really delighted in was the “powerful, uneducated man”—the artisan and the mechanic.
From The Vagabond in Literature by Arthur Rickett
And this good, at least, has to be recorded of him, that he saved the family of Thomas Wanless from want, by consequence, also, in all probability, saving Thomas himself from becoming an abandoned Ishmaelite.
From The Life of Thomas Wanless, Peasant by Alexander Johnstone Wilson
Registered as the Rosebud, this innocent name was painted on her stern and on her sixteen dories; but she was known among the fishing-fleet as the Ishmaelite, and the name fitted her.
From "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea by Morgan Robertson
He even introduced a contemporary critic of Utopian conditions in the shape of the talkative person, "a conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly inexplicable way a most consummate ass."
From H. G. Wells by J. D. (John Davys) Beresford
The truth is that every brook trout is an Ishmaelite.
From Forest Neighbors Life Stories of Wild Animals by William Davenport Hulbert
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
