"Nation" was born from a word that meant "to be born" and soon came to mean breed or stock.
It next came to mean "that which has been born," that is "a breed." But it soon came to refer to a species or race.
"Way down yonder in the Indian Nation" is a refrain from an old song. Speaking as an America, are we race, racist, both, or none of the above?
So, "nation" came to mean "a race of people." "A race of people" implies a strong blood or genetic relationship.
A word's history is carried with it, much like my history is part of me.
Recently we started to use "nationality" and "nation" in reference to the country of origin of a people or person, and meanings got a bit confused.
Very recently "nation" has been taken over as a political/legal concept of nation as "an organized territorial unit." By this notion the United States of America can be called a nation.
My old Webster uses the words "birth" and "race" as part of the ongoing meaning of "nation." It goes on to say that "nation" refers to a group or aggregation of closely related persons. This sounds correct and useful to me, but also inclines me me to add "racist" and "inbred" to our power words.
"Culture" seems a more useful word to include among our power words. We have notions of the nature of "stock" and "breed" Are we breeding some good stock. Culture is learned. Could there be a sort of cultural breed or cultural stock?
Are we mustangs or thoroughbreds, or something else? Another dictionary says that, what we have come to call a community of people of of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government, is a nation. Seems like it is trying to describe us. How are we describing ourselves these days? Dictionary compilers keep trying to give a realistic definition to a word that we have twisted out of shape. Another dictionary tried this: A nation is a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually of a large size and independent status!
One newer dictionary says that a nation is a people, who share common customs, origins, history, and often language. This seems a very good try at a definition that many people now mean when they use the word, nation. This definition feels congenial and useful. Another definition seems less congenial: A nation is a rather large group of people under a single, usually independent government. This last one lacks heart.
I think we could be a good nation and like many feel we do have a good country. We appear to be on our way to deciding who and what we are. A country seems an OK start.
Still, "nation" does have a nice ring to it. Could the Navajo nation be an example? or could Iceland?
Thanks for reading. Word power to you.
RCS