humanity Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun the quality of being humane
  2. noun the quality of being human
    manhood; humanness.
    • he feared the speedy decline of all manhood
  3. noun all of the living human inhabitants of the earth
    humans; human race; humankind; mankind; human beings; world; man.
    • all the world loves a lover
    • she always used `humankind' because `mankind' seemed to slight the women

WordNet

Hu*man"i*ty noun
Etymology
L. humanitas: cf. F. humanité. See Human.
Wordforms
plural Humanities
Definitions
  1. The quality of being human; the peculiar nature of man, by which he is distinguished from other beings.
  2. Mankind collectively; the human race.
    But hearing oftentimes The still, and music humanity. Wordsworth.
    It is a debt we owe to humanity. S. S. Smith.
  3. The quality of being humane; the kind feelings, dispositions, and sympathies of man; especially, a disposition to relieve persons or animals in distress, and to treat all creatures with kindness and tenderness. "The common offices of humanity and friendship." Locke.
  4. Mental cultivation; liberal education; instruction in classical and polite literature.
    Polished with humanity and the study of witty science. Holland.
  5. pl. (With definite article) The branches of polite or elegant learning; as language, rhetoric, poetry, and the ancient classics; belles-letters. ✍ The cultivation of the languages, literature, history, and archæology of Greece and Rome, were very commonly called literæ humaniores, or, in English, the humanities, . . . by way of opposition to the literæ divinæ, or divinity. G. P. Marsh.

Webster 1913