Of or pertaining to Shem or his descendants; belonging to that division of the Caucasian race which includes the Arabs, Jews, and related races.

Designating a major subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages which include: Northeastern (Akkadian), Northwestern (Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, etc.), and Southwestern (Arabic, Ethiopic, etc.); derived from Noah's son Shem ("Name"), who was said to be father of the Hebrews, Elamites, Assyrians and Arabians; commonly refers to the Jewish race

relating to a group of people living in southwestern Asia represented now by Jews and Arabs and in ancient times by Babylonians, Assyrians, Arameans, Canaanites, and Phoenicians

a major branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family

of or relating to the group of Semitic languages; "Semitic tongues have a complicated morphology"

1) A language group in the Afro-Asiatic language family that includes Hebrew and Arabic. 2) description of Middle East peoples that trace their origin from the biblical Noah and his son Shem; these include Jews and Arabs.

Pertaining to a race, language or culture linked to the line of Shem (see Genesis 10); Semitic languages include Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Akkadian.

In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם, translated as "name", Arabic: سام) was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. This family includes the ancient and modern forms of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese and Tigrinya among others.