Goy
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Goy (Hebrew: גוי, plural goyim גוים) is a transliterated Hebrew word which translates as "nation" or "people".
In the Hebrew Bible, goy and its variants appear over 550 times in reference to Israelites and to Gentile peoples. The first recorded usage of goy occurs in Genesis 10:5 and applies to non-Israelite nations. The first mention in relation to the Israelites comes in Genesis 12:2, when God promises Abraham that his descendants will form a goy gadol ("great nation"). While the earlier books of the Hebrew Bible often use goy to describe the Israelites, the later ones tend to apply the term to other nations.
Modern Hebrew and Yiddish have preserved the descriptive sense found in the Bible and the word goy is generally used to refer to members of the Gentile nations. In English, similarly, the word may be used dispassionately to refer to anybody who is not Jewish. It may also sometimes be assigned pejoratively to non-Jews as well as to Jews who are perceived by other Jews to lack religious commitment to Judaism. Although claims are repeatedly made that (1) the word goy literally means "cattle" in Hebrew and (2) has consequently been appropriated to denigrate Gentiles because of these alleged etymological beginnings, no linguistic basis supports either of these assertions. As explained above, goy had its origins in the Bible to mean "nation" or "people" and applied to Jews and Gentiles alike. To avoid any offensive connotations that have been attached to the word, some writers prefer the terms "Gentile" or "non-Jew".