Ethiopia
- 1A country in East Africa, in the region known as the Horn of Africa.
Ethiopia shares borders with Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, and Eritrea.
The highlands of Ethiopia rise sharply above the surrounding lowlands.
Note
The modern country carries a name far older than itself: Latin Aethiopia, from Greek Aithiopía, built on Aithíops, a word of Proto-Hellenic origin. English took the classical name over a native one. Old English called the land Siġelhearwena land, literally "land of the sun worshippers." Today the name points squarely at the state, with its wheat fields and its remote southern regions.
- 2The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the country's official form since 1987.
Ethiopia's constitution grants each region the right to manage local affairs.
Federal ministries in Ethiopia coordinate policy across the regional states.
- 3The Ethiopian Empire, which lasted from around 1270 to 1974 and was also known as Abyssinia.
Emperor Menelik II expanded Ethiopia's borders during the late nineteenth century.
Ethiopia remained one of the few African states never fully colonized.
SimilarAbyssinia
- 4Italian Ethiopia, the colonial territory under Italian rule from 1936 to 1941.
Italian forces ruled Ethiopia until Allied and Ethiopian troops liberated it in 1941.
Mussolini proclaimed Ethiopia part of a new Italian empire in 1936.
- 5The Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia, the Marxist military regime that ruled from 1974 to 1987, known as the Derg.
Ethiopia aligned with the Soviet bloc after the military seized power in 1974.
The Derg nationalized industry and land throughout Ethiopia.
- 6In historical usage, sub-Saharan Africa, especially the regions south of Egypt and lying along and east of the Nile.
Herodotus described Ethiopia as lying at the southern edge of the known world.
The Diamande is engendred in the mynes of India, Ethiopia, Arabia, Macedonia, and Cyprus, and in the golde mynes of the same countries.
1553, Richard Eden, A treatyse of the newe IndiaNote
This is the name as older writers used it: a vague region beyond Egypt, not a state with borders. Richard Eden in 1553 lists Ethiopia beside India and Arabia as a place where diamonds are mined. George Leighton Ditson, in 1858, calls the region "undefined in its limits" and explains the Greek name as "land of black faces." In older texts, read a broad southern horizon, not the modern country.
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Origin
This comes from Latin Aethiopia, from Ancient Greek Αἰθιοπία (Aithiopía), from Αἰθίοψ (Aithíops), which is of Proto-Hellenic origin. It replaced the native Old English name Siġelhearwena land, literally "land of the sun worshippers".