Other forms: humans
Human means to do with people rather than animals or machines. Human beings, human error, only human.
As a noun it names the species, and human being is the fuller form. Human error is the standard phrase in accident reports, and human rights are those held by virtue of being one. Only human is the excuse offered for ordinary failure. Note humane, which is a different word meaning compassionate — the two were one word until the eighteenth century and were split deliberately.
1adjectivehumanTo do with people rather than animals or machines.~85%
“The crash was blamed on human error rather than a problem with the plane.”
2nounmemberA member of the species.~15%
“Roughly eight billion humans are alive now.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
human is a quality of people.
Latin humanus comes from homo, a person, related to humus, the ground — a human is an earthly creature as against a god. Humble and exhume come from the same ground.
Middle English
humayne
English, today
human
Built from
From Middle English humayne. From Late Middle English humaigne, humayne, humain, from Middle French humain, from Old French humain, umain (“of or belonging to man”), from Latin hūmānus (“of man, human”); see there for further details. Spelling human has been predominant since the early 18th century. Compare, and possibly related to man.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA