human being
Pluralhuman beings
- 1A person: a member of the species Homo sapiens, the large, sapient, two-legged primate with far less body hair than other primates.
Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity.
Human beings need sleep as surely as they need food and water.
Similarperson, human, individual
Note
The phrase exists because human began as an adjective and needed a noun to lean on, as in a living being. Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) already uses it at a grave moment, when a man reflects that he might deprive a human being of life. Now that human stands alone as a noun, a human and a human being mean much the same.
- 2Any member of the genus Homo, including extinct species as well as modern humans.
The stone tools in the cave were made by human beings who lived long before our own species appeared.
A Neanderthal was a human being too, even though it belonged to a different species from ours.
Similarhuman
Note
Writing about human evolution stretches the phrase past our own species. M. S. Green's Engaging Philosophy places Homo erectus, Homo sapiens and Homo floresiensis together in the category, and Hyun Höchsmann's On Peter Singer calls Homo habilis the first human being. When a text is about fossils or ancestors, expect this wider reach; elsewhere the everyday meaning is the default.
Practice
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Origin
From the adjective human + the noun being; human was originally an adjective, so it needed a noun after it.