ABSTRACT
Starting in the 1970s, the word diaspora spilled over its traditional boundaries as designator of the farflung fate of a small number of groups-principally the Jews-outside their homeland. My 1956 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has a two-word definition, derived from biblical sources: “The Dispersion.” By 1991, my Random House Webster’s College Dictionary follows the Jews with “any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland.” Diaspora’s meaning has expanded as part of our ever greater interest in issues of deterritorialization. With typical Anglo-Saxon verbal flexibility, it is used as a noun (“in diaspora”) or adjective (“a diaspora mentality”), and when a suffix is attached, there is no uniformity, some liking “diasporan” while others (like myself ) prefer “diasporic.”
