This is the allusionist, in which I, Helen Zoltzman, sweep the remains of languages

Winter Pelt of the Floor.

Let's get ready for today's show with some word history.

Here's the etymology of Alien.

Used to mean extraterrestrial, it is officially cited from 1953 when it appeared in the magazine

Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

That sense had likely been a use in science fiction for a while before three decades or

more probably, a being from another planet was an extension of aliens' preexisting meaning

of a person from another place.

That goes back to the mid-15th century or so.

The word can be traced back to Latin, alias meaning another or different.

And the noun alienus meaning not one's own, a stranger, a foreigner.

It's widely thought to be offensive when used about humans now, and some states and countries

have made an effort to replace the wording in their laws.

But in the 60s and 70s, alien was encouraged as a neutral term to refer to humans on the

move, as so many of the alternatives in use then were racial slurs.

However, by the 1990s, alien itself was offensive and came to be substituted with terms like

illegal immigrant and eventually undocumented immigrant or foreign national, less loaded

terms for now.

The language around human migration is ever shifting, and that's where we're going

in this episode, on with the show.

Recognizing someone's humanity is crucial.

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