human being

From human (adjective) +‎ being (noun). The word human was originally an adjective, thus requiring a base noun.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˌhjuːmən ˈbiːɪŋ/

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human being (plural human beings)

2. A person; a large sapient, bipedal primate, with notably less hair than others of that order, of the species Homo sapiens.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, VII xiv:

     He began to reflect that in a few Minutes he might possibly deprive a human Being of Life, or might lose his own.

   • 2024 August 5, Michelle Goldberg, “JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 24 August 2024:

     The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped.

3. Any member of the genus Homo, including extinct species.
   • 1983, Valjean McLenighan, China, A History to 1949‎^[2], Chicago: Children's Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 10:

     The first real human beings in China lived about 600,000 years ago. Fossils of Gigantopithecus, a Latin name for Giant Ape, were dug up at Lan-t'ien in the early 1960s. Though they looked a lot like apes, the Lan-t'ien people were among the first of our species to make tools.

   • 2002, Hyun Höchsmann, On Peter Singer, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, →ISBN, page 2:

     As Australopithecus evolved into the first human being, Homo habilis, and then into the species, Homo sapiens, we have evolved as social beings

   • 2006, P. & C. Zaleski, Prayer: A History, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 15:

     Who was the first human being to pray? Perhaps he or she was a member of Homo habilis, the first truly human species, who roamed the gorges and plains of sub-Saharan Africa about two million years ago, or perhaps a member of Homo erectus (1.6 million—300,000 B.C.E.), Homo habilis’s immediate descendants, who spread across half the globe, from the eastern plains of Asia to the valleys of northern Europe.

   • 2006, M.S. Green, Engaging Philosophy, Hackett, →ISBN, page 143:

     The category “human being” is a biological one, and Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, and Homo floresiensis all belong in it.

   • 2007, K. Kotsakis, “Tools and language”, in A.F. Christidis, editor, A History of Ancient Greek, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 106:

     A specific part of the left hemisphere, known as Broca's area, which is associated in modern humans with speech production, has already been observed in casts of the brain of homo habilis, the first human being to make tools

   • 2009, B. Waters, Zambia in Pictures, Twenty-First Century Books, →ISBN, page 20:

     At several sites in Zambia, archaeologists have found stone tools dating back more than 200,000 years. The people who created these tools were probably Homo erectus, an early type of human being.

   • 2014, S. Rasmussen, The Greatest Safari: In the Beginning Was Africa, 30 Degrees South, →ISBN, pages 223–224:

     We have an idea that the first human being, Homo habilis, was the fruit of an Australopithecus – either africanus or garhi – and that it subsequently developed into the upright human Homo erectus, from which both the Neanderthal and the modern human being derive

   • 2018, H. Foyaca-Sibat, L.F. Ibañez-Valdés, “Introductory Chapter”, in H. Foyaca-Sibat, editor, Seizures, →DOI, →ISBN, page 2:

     Probably the first human being infected by Taenia solium was the Homo ergaster [1, 2]. Therefore, the history of epileptic seizures began at the Lower Pleistocene (between 1.51 and 1.56 million years ago) when H. ergaster lived.

• See also Thesaurus:person

• ape