race

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a contest of speed

   the race is to the swift

2. 2
   noun

   any competition

   the race for the presidency

3. 3
   noun

   people who are believed to belong to the same genetic stock

   some biologists doubt that there are important genetic differences between races of human beings

4. 4
   verb

   cause to move fast or to rush or race

   The psychologist raced the rats through a long maze

5. 5
   noun

   A contest between people, animals, vehicles, etc. where the goal is to be the first to reach some objective.

   Several horses ran in a horse race: the first one to reach the finishing post won.

6. 6
   noun

   Swift progress; rapid motion; an instance of moving or driving at high speed.

   The flight of many birds is swifter than the race of any beasts.

7. 7
   noun

   A race condition; a bug or problem that occurs when two or more components attempt to use the same resource at the same time.

   Many problems of oscillations and races are solved by this arrangement.

8. 8
   noun

   A sequence of events; a progressive movement toward a goal.

   A race of wicked acts / Shall flow out of my anger, and o’erspread / The world’s wide face[.]

Etymology

1560s, via Middle French race from Italian razza (early 14th century), of uncertain origin. Partially displaced native Middle English kinde (“kind, type, sort, race, nature”), whence English kind. theories * Diez and some other scholars suggest derivation from Proto-Germanic *raitō (whence Old High German reiza (“line”) and Old Norse ríta (“to score, log, outline”)), perhaps via Lombardic *raiza (“line”), which Körting notes is a literal rendering of Latin linea sanguinis (“bloodline of descent”). Anatoly Liberman says "the semantic fit is good" but the chronology falters; he says the Germanic…