On Fri, 26 May 2006, JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> Is philistine an ethnic slur? As in Filastin? Just wondering, not
> criticizing its use.
Yes, but like vandal, it refers to a long vanished ethnic group, so there's no one around to take offense.
It is true that in other languages Filastin is the word for Palestine (thanks to that great vowel shift that made Ps into Fs, whereby Pater became Father) and so that etymologically Palestinians could have been called Philistines. But they're not. To my knowledge, in languages that spell Palestine with an F, the word equivalent for "philistine" only applies to the historical group, and something with a different ending applies to the palestinians.
Also I don't think there's any language outside english where "philistine" means "unlearned in art." I believe that's something we got in English from Matthew Arnold and his distinction between the elite Hellenizing culture that sought continually trying to burst through oppressive conformity in a renaissances vs. its puritan, old-testament-emphasizing opponents. I believe this was eventually sloganized into the opposition between the elites and the oppressive philistines -- the puritans of the ancient Jews, and thus the ur-puritans -- with Samson the romanatic hero who wants to bring down their house on their heads. Epater les bourgeoisie indeed. (But of course note that it's a cultural definition right down to the ground -- philistines are defined even in the bible by their difference in creed, not by difference in race.)
Anyway, in countries with romance languages, Arnold didn't have so much influence and all these weird oppositions never took root. In France I think the word for philistines is "les moyen americains" :o)
Michael