The word race entered dictionaries in 1606 denoting animal-like descent

Evidence

The word race first appeared in Frenchman Jacques de Brézé’s 1481 poem “The Hunt,” where it referred to hunting dogs. As the term expanded to include humans over the next century, it was used primarily to identify and differentiate and animalize African people. The term did not appear in a dictionary until 1606, when French diplomat Jean Nicot included an entry for it. “Race … means descent,” he explained, and “it is said that a man, a horse, a dog or another animal is from good or bad race.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 84

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins down the etymology and first dictionary entry of ‘race’ — the animal-breeding origin is the load-bearing point for the human-race construction.
• SEED: The word ‘race’ originally meant dog-breeding descent — an angle on how breeding vocabulary licensed grouping humans as breeds.
• SHARE: The ‘race’ entry first appearing in 1606 and derived from hunting-breed vocabulary is a perfect niche fact for a linguist or etymologist friend.
• XREF: connects to: Race as a configuration dates only from the late eighteenth century