Word definition: race

Etimology

From Middle English race, partially from Old English rǣs (“a race, swift or violent running, rush, onset”), from Proto-West Germanic *rās; and partially from Old Norse rás (“a running, race”); both from Proto-Germanic *rēsō (“a course”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁reh₁s- (“to flow, rush”). Cognate with Middle Low German râs (“a strong current”), Dutch ras (“a strong whirling current”), Danish ræs, Norwegian and Swedish ras, Norwegian rås.

noun

Examples

Several horses ran in a horse race: the first one to reach the finishing post won.

The race to cure cancer

The race around the park was won by Johnny, who ran faster than the others.

We had a race to see who could finish the book the quickest.

I returned, and saw vnder the Sunne, That the race is not to the swift, nor the battell to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of vnderstanding, nor yet fauour to men of skil; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

"Behold that rival here! / "The race by vigour, not by vaunts is won; / "So take the hindmost, Hell."—He said, and run.

After days of intensifying pressure from runners, politicians and the general public to call off the New York City Marathon in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, city officials and the event’s organizers decided Friday afternoon to cancel the race.

Synonyms: dash, running, rush

The flight of many birds is swifter than the race of any beasts.

Hence the rapid race / Of light, and lustre from th' effusive sun

And above all, it is an age of activity and enterprise, an age of new discoveries and new deviltries, an age of magnetic telegraphs and Mississippi bonds, and it would be indeed odd if, in the swift race of progress, the rogue did not keep his natural station in the van of the movement.

Synonyms: race condition, race hazard

Many problems of oscillations and races are solved by this arrangement.

Because a race by definition depends on the timing being just wrong, you could test your program any number of times, never observe any misbehavior, and still have a user run into the problem.¶ This occurrence is not just a theoretical possibility: Real programs have race bugs and real users have encountered them, sometimes with consequences that have literally been fatal.

As the name implies, a race condition means that two processes are competing within the same time interval, and the race affects the integrity or correctness of the computing tasks.

Synonyms: course, procedure, process, train; see also Thesaurus:sequence

A race of wicked acts / Shall flow out of my anger, and o’erspread / The world’s wide face[.]

An offensive war is made, which is unjust in the aggressor; the prosecution and race of the war carrieth the defendant to invade the ancient patrimony of the first aggressor, who is now turned defendant; shall he sit down, and not put himself in defence?

Synonym: rip

Here are in these seas two dangerous races, the one called St. Alban's, the other Portland Race.

The existing analysis and program for the propeller-rudder interaction has been updated incorporating all the improvements concerned with the propeller loading distribution, including that associated with the fact that the rudder is immersed in the race of the propeller.

This is an area of spectacular tidal races, rips, swirls, boils, whirlpools, overfalls, currents, and countercurrents. Scylla and Charybdis pale by comparison with the great maelstroms where the sea is trapped between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland.

Hyponyms: headrace, mill race, wheel-race, tailrace

Evidently the future manufacturing development depends upon the hydraulic canal, so far as existing works are concerned, rather than upon the two races, which can never be enlarged to embrace a comprehensive improvement of the river, while the capabilities at th hydraulic basin are unrivaled. So far as can be learned there is no expectation of ever increasing materially the capacity of the races.

Any miners intending to divert and use water for mining or general purposes, or to cut a race or construct dams or reservoirs in connection therewith, shall give notice in writing thereof to the Warden […]

Water for irrigation is stored in the high country behind the Upper Manorburn Dam. Two parallel races at different levels run along the west side of the valley and one race flowing along the east side is supplemented by water stored at the Poolburn Dam.

Synonyms: career, course, progress

My race of glory run, and race of ſhame,

There were all the marked passages, which had thrilled his soul so often,—words of patriarchs and seers, poets and sages, who from early time had spoken courage to man,—voices from the great cloud of witnesses who ever surround us in the race of life.

Don't let fear be a factor for you as the finish line of harvest calls out to you to join the race of eternity. Clear the table of excuses and go!

Synonym: shuttle race

I have lately seen a shuttle machine of Messrs. Grover Baker's construction, in which the shuttle worked in a semi-circular race and produced two stitches at each revolution of the wheel.

Meanwhile another lug on the shuttle-band engages another carrier at the other end of the loom, and the belt, continuing to move in the same direction, conveys the carrier across the race in a similar manner as above described.

These bearings do not employ a loading groove or filling slot but utilize an uninterrupted race groove containing the maximum number of balls that can be introduced by eccentric displacement of the races. Due to the relatively large size of the balls and the fact that the ball curvature is only slightly less than the race curvature, the bearings have comparatively high load carrying capacity in both axial and radial directions.

The chances of picking up an inner race fault are small unless the load direction of the bearing coincides with the location of the accelerometer.

The bearing comprises four mechanical components: an outer race, an inner race, rollers , and a cage that holds the rollers in place.

Your odds are sometimes significantly better with video keno […] But because video keno plays so much faster, you're likely to lose more money over a given period. Live keno races start every 10 minutes, but you can make 100 bets on a video version in the same amount of time.

Related words

verb

Examples

The drivers were racing around the track.

Honesty raced up six lengths in front of Wandering Minstrel, turned, then raced past for the second, and lost his place at the hedge; some work followed to the plantation, but Honesty was always the faster in the racing stretches, and won easily.

"I cannot wait to race in front of the amazing home crowd," she added.

I raced him to the car, but he was there first, so he got to ride shotgun.

[…] a fresh fox popped out of a pit, and they raced him to Cherrington, where hounds were stopped at dark […]

He pulled it down and saw Tech's full-back closing in. Counting on his own fresh condition, Jimmy raced him toward the sidelines, and got around him just in time to prevent being forced out. The goal was waiting for him twenty yards away, and to the accompaniment of a deafening shout from the stands he placed the pigskin across the goal line.

Synonyms: rush, shift, zip, zoom

As soon as it was time to go home, he raced for the door.

Her heart was racing as she peered into the dimly lit room.

There she goes / There she goes again / Racing through my brain / And I just can't contain / This feeling that remains

Across Japan, technology companies and private investors are racing to install devices that until recently they had little interest in: solar panels. Massive solar parks are popping up as part of a rapid build-up that one developer likened to an "explosion."

Racing on, we parallel the M5 doing 95mph, according to the app on my smartphone.

"My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built."

He put the transmission into drive and pressed the gas. The engine raced and the motor home rocked, gently, but did not move forward.

Etimology

1560s, via Middle French race from Italian razza (early 14th century), of uncertain origin.

noun

Examples

Synonyms: breed, strain, kind, lineage, people, variety

Synonyms: clan, ethnicity, ethnic group, ethnie, nationality, tribe

The Canadian race is one of the most vigorous on the globe.

We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them—they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors.

I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen.

What is to become of the French race and the British race—yes, and the German race—if this thing keeps up?

Hyponyms: black, white, caucasian, mongoloid

Race was a significant issue during apartheid in South Africa.

The Native Americans colonized the New World in several waves from Asia, and thus they are considered part of the same Mongoloid race.

The race to which most anthropologists refer the native Americans is the Mongoloid of Eastern Asia, who are capable of accommodating themselves to the extremest climates, and who by the form of skull, the light brown skin, straight black hair, and black eyes, show considerable agreement with the American tribes.

Colonel Lin Nan: Would it offend you to be loved by a man of another race?Gladys Aylward: It would honor me.

Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?

The advent of the Internet has brought about a new race of entrepreneur.

His opinion is founded on the alleged fact that there are scarely any drunkards in the wine-producing regions, where people drink wine with their food as freely as we do tea or coffee. "Give us what good wine we need," says the professor, "and the temperance crusade will be wellnigh ended when the present race of drunkards have passed away.

There's a race of men that don't fit in, / A race that can't stay still; / So they break the hearts of kith and kin, / And they roam the world at will.

Indeed, all of us are called to join the race of faith. Our identity as Christians is not a burden or an obstacle for our lives, but is rather a gift, […]

A treaty was concluded between the race of elves and the race of men.

There are two distinct races of gods known to Norse mythology[.]

Imagine a race of aliens that develops on a dimly lit world perpetually shrouded in clouds so that vision would be less useful for survival than on Earth.

Tali: My father is responsible for the lives of seventeen million people—our entire race is in his hands. And I'm his only child.

Synonyms: kind, strain, variety

Synonyms: ecospecies, ecotype, subspecies

Two races are certainly valid. The Atlantic race is distinguishable from the Pacific race by skull characters.

A population that differs signicatly from other populations belonging to the same species is referred to as a geographic race or subspecies. Subspecies are separated from other subspecies by distance and geographic barriers that prevent the exchange of individuals, as opposed to the genetically based "intrinsic isolating mechanisms" that hold species apart.

Hyponyms: cultigen, cultivar, indigen

Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable, that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor soil , that they would to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the wild aboriginal stock.

Tree races develop not only in different latitudes, but also at different altitudes and within mountainous regions. Since climate changes markedly with altitude as well as latitude, both kinds of development are included in the term climatic races. In addition, soil or site races may develop in areas similar climatically but characterized by different soil or site conditions.

Our genetic evaluation suggests that the morphologically distinct race is more closely related to the type materials than the ecologically distinct, high-elevation race.

For do but note a wild and wanton herd, / Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, / Fetching mad bounds.

They have another breed, called the Dunlop cows, which are allowed to be the best race for yielding milk in Great Britain or Ireland, not only for large quantities, but also for richness in quality.

Great St. Bernard Dog—This race is nearly allied to the Newfoundland Dog in form, stature, hair, and colors; but the head and ears are like that of a Water Spaniel.

Synonyms: pathotype, pathovar

Now Mary MacDonald of the Plant Breeding Institute at Maris Lane, Cambridge, has made an interesting study which has duplicated the conditions under which new races arise. And she has produced at least one new fungal race.

The type of microorganisms is a very important factor influencing the quality of cider. Yeast of various producers and races result in different taste and flavor.

Synonyms: class, type; see also Thesaurus:class

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, / Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!

Synonym: typicity

Is it [the wine] of the right race?

On the day following Elizabeth's interview with Gideon, this innocent relish—the olives which gave zest, or the walnuts which gave race and richness, to Monkshaugh's moderate hebdomadal glass of old claret—was not forgotten.

So sang the poet in his pride of place, / And Arthur bade the pages plenish well / The cups of all the kings with wine of race, / Osaye or Algarde, Rhenish or Rochell, / Vernage of Venice, Rhodes or Famagust, / Sweet Malvoisie or Cretan Muscadel,—

Synonyms: attribute, idiosyncrasy, quirk, trait; see also Thesaurus:characteristic

And now I give my sensual race the rein.

[…] some great race of fancy or judgment in the contrivance […]

His conversation, too, had a race and flavour peculiarly its own: it was nervous, sententious, and tinctured with genuine wit.

Synonyms: breeding, procreation, progenation, propagation, reproduction

It behooveth therefore that the Mares appointed for race, be well compacted, of a decent quality, being fair and beautiful to look upon, the belly and loins being great, in age not under three nor above ten years old.

Male he created thee, but thy consort / Femal for Race; then bless’d Mankinde, and said, / Be fruitful, multiplie, and fill the Earth[.]

Synonyms: extraction, family, house, line, pedigree, stirp

Yes, madam, believe it, she is a gentlewoman of very absolute behaviour, and of a good race.

Wars of religion, more sanguinary, cruel, and ruinous than even those of Henry the fifth and Edward the third, rise in succession under the three last princes of the race of Valois.

That very estate which the Lyndons now possess in Ireland was once the property of my race.

Synonyms: age group, cohort

In ſeveral orders of knighthood, as in that of Malta, &c. the candidates muſt prove a nobility of four races or deſcents.

Perhaps this is the reason why it is an article of faith with the servants, handed down from race to race, that the departed Tisher was a hairdresser.

For the old stock is fast dying out, Jennie, / And a young race is taking their place, / In our grandmothers' day they had sense, Jennie, / No powder or paints on their face.

Synonyms: get, issue, seed

Have I my pillow left unpressed in Rome, / Forborne the getting of a lawful race, / And by a gem of women, to be abused / By one that looks on feeders?

The good man besought him. Let the king / Propitious hear a parent. In thy train / I have five sons. Ah! leave my eldest born, / Thy future vassal, to sustain my age!' / The tyrant fell reply'd. 'Presumptuous man, / Who art my slave, in this tremendous war, / Is not my person hazarded, my race, / My consort?[']

There the passions cramp’d no longer shall have scope and breathing-space; / I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. / Iron-jointed, supple-sinew’d, they shall dive, and they shall run, / Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun[.]

Related words

verb

Examples

To be raced as black in the U.S. translates symbolically into being considered inferior to whites, lazy, immoral, boisterous, violent, and sexually promiscuous.

From this perspective, the project of progressive blackness entails the edification of black people and the elimination of all forms of domination that limit this edification for all those raced as black.

By avoiding being raced as white, whites are able to maintain the illusion that they have always been individuals, that they have always accomplished their achievements through merit alone.

[T]he private family qua mode of social reproduction still, frankly, sucks. It genders, nationalizes and races us. It norms us for productive work.

Synonyms: come true, breed true

D'Hervieux obſerves that it is uſual to put the female canary bird to the male goldfinch, linnet, or the like, to breed; but for his part, he ſhould chuſe to put the male canary-bird to the female goldfinch, linnet, &c. becauſe the male uſually races more than the female, i. e. the young ones take more after the male than after the female.

Etimology

Mid 16th century. From Middle French raïz, raiz, rais (“root”), from Latin radix (“root”), from Proto-Italic *wrādīks, from Proto-Indo-European *wréh₂ds.

noun

Examples

I must have saffron to color the warden pies; mace; dates, none—that's out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pounds of prunes, and as many of raisins o' th' sun.

They have onions and garlick, and some herbs and small roots for sallads; and in the southernmoft parts, ginger growing almost in every place; the large races whereof are there very excellently well preserved, as we may know by our tasting them in England.

On the third day after this second boiling, pour all the syrup into a pan, put the races of ginger with it, and boil it up until the syrup adheres to the spoon.

verb

Examples

Synonyms: demolish, destroy, tear up; see also Thesaurus:destroy

[…] and after he be-heilde towarde the fier, and saugh the flesshe that the knaue hadde rosted that was tho I-nough, and raced it of with his hondes madly, and rente it a-sonder in peces, and wette it in mylke, and after in the hony, and ete as a wood man that nought ther lefte of the flessh; […]