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The Humanity of Universal Crime
 The Humanity
of Universal Crime
Inclusion, Inequality, and Intervention in
International Political Thought

SI N JA G R A F

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Graf, Sinja, author.
Title: The humanity of universal crime : inclusion, inequality, and
intervention in international political thought / Sinja Graf.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020043992 (print) | LCCN 2020043993 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197535707 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197535721 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Crimes against humanity—Law and legislation. | Crimes against humanity. |
International crimes—Law and legislation. | International crimes.
Classification: LCC KZ7145.G73 2021 (print) | LCC KZ7145 (ebook) |
DDC 345/.023501—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043992
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043993

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197535707.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
 Contents

Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction  1
1. “To Regain Some Kind of Human Equality”:
Theorizing the Political Productivity of
Universal Crime  27
2. From Humanity to Sovereignty: Universal Crime and
Sovereign Foundings in John Locke’s Second Treatise
of Government  49
3. “The Conscience of the Civilized World”:
Nineteenth-​Century International Law and the
Decline of Notions of Universal Crime  77
4. Cosmopolitanism and Crimes Against Humanity:
“Global Policing” and the Legitimacy of Political
Violence in the Late Twentieth Century  113
Conclusion  169

Notes  185
Index  245
 Acknowledgments

It takes a village to write a book. In this case, it took a global village. While
working on versions of this book in Ithaca, Istanbul, and Singapore, I have
accrued more debts than I can hope to settle. At the National University of
Singapore, I thank my colleagues in the Political Science Department and
the Faculty of Law for creating the institutional space in which I could bring
this project to its conclusion. The outlines of this work I first developed in
my dissertation at Cornell University. My committee members’ supervision
laid the foundations for my work’s intellectual orientation. The encourage-
ment, scholarly expectations, and intellectual vivacity of Susan Buck-​Morss,
Matthew Evangelista, Jason Frank, and Richard Bensel decisively shaped
my path to becoming a young scholar. Jens David Ohlin, Sidney Tarrow,
Matthew Evangelista, and Muna Ndulo supervised my course of study in
international law at the Cornell Law School. Their expertise influenced my
thinking in ways pivotal to the development of this book. Odette Lienau
read the entire dissertation and her comments prompted some very impor-
tant changes. M. Elizabeth Sanders and Mary Katzenstein set my ambition
to excel as a lecturer. To this day, I often return to Mary Katzenstein’s class
on prisons for academic, political, and pedagogical reasons. Isaac Kramnick
was a mentor, scholar, teacher, and advisor without equal. Without him and
Miriam Brody, my perspective on the academy—​and life within it—​would
have been very much impoverished.
Cornell’s Department of Government provided me with an academically
lively institutional home during my doctoral studies. Conversations with
Peter Katzenstein, Alex Livingston, Aziz Rana, and Sarah Kreps formed my
thinking about this project in its incipient phase. The Reppy Institute for
Peace and Conflict Studies curated a scholarly community for engaging new
ideas under the leadership of Judith Reppy and Jonathan Kirshner. I am es-
pecially grateful to the Reppy Institute for giving me the yearlong Bluestone
Peace Studies Fellowship, which afforded me the time to write key portions
of the dissertation. Tina Slater, Laurie Coon, Judy Virgilio, Elaine Scott,
and the staff members at the ISSO provided steady administrative support,
viii Acknowledgments

thereby saving me from what otherwise would have been certain bureau-
cratic demise.
The conversations with my colleague William Bain over the years have
been influential for this project’s maturation. The depth of his expertise and
his commitment to knowledge creation make him a model mentor. Writing
this book without his encouragement would have been a much more chal-
lenging process. Antony Anghie’s graduate class some ten years ago gave this
study its direction. In Singapore, his academic advice, sharp wit, and gen-
erosity brightened the routine that it took to complete the project. Helen
Kinsella’s scholarly work and her friendship never cease to bring insight and
joy. Jeanne Morefield’s political thought set the stage for mine to develop.
Theo Christov read a chapter when it was at its earliest stage. His feedback
and interest in the argument encouraged me to more fully develop my
thinking on Locke. Harvard’s Institute for Global Law and Policy provided an
important academic forum for internationally engaged scholarship. Sharing
ideas with Osama Siddique, Maryam Khan, Jamie Rowen, Itamar Mann, Luis
Eslava, Rose Sydney Parfitt, and Sundhya Pahuja enlivened my writing.
Writing, like life, is impossible without friendship. Ayça Çubukçu, Murad
Idris, and Pınar Kemerli have been my examples for the intellectual pursuit
of critical thought. Others who similarly granted me the privilege of their
companionship over many years are Theresa Krüggeler, Katie Church, Yossi
Bronsnick, Gregor Sayet-​Bone, Simon Gilhooley, Michelle Greco, Avery
Slater, Michelle Renée Smith, Corinna Lee, Noelle Brigden, Nolan Bennett,
Kevin Duong, Alison McQueen, Simon Cotton, Kyong-​Min Son, Anthony
Reed, Ng Shi Wen, Gerard Sasges, Shailey Hingorani, Rohan Mukherjee,
Soul Park, Kriti Vikram, Tan Hsien-​Li, Sandra Field, Amrita Kattan, Victor
Kattan, Fanar Haddad, Farrah Mahmoud, Deepak Nair, Kevin McGahan,
Vincent-​ Joel Proulx, Nancy Webster Gleason, and Joshua Kurz. Janice
Gallagher, with Emily, Ellen, Allyson, Jasper, and Aidan, have added love and
light to the long decade during which this book was in progress. I wish we
had had much more time to figure out this one really important question
together with Jay. The cats, of which there have been either two too many or
two too few, have provided solace, predictability, and entertainment. It shall
be recorded that writing parts of this book came at the cost of the uninten-
tional and intermittent undernourishment of a rescue cat. The cat was fine in
the end.
At Oxford University Press, Angela Chnapko has overseen this project
from its beginnings to its completion. Her insight, support, and patience
 Acknowledgments ix

make her an exemplary editor. I thank Alexcee Bechthold for the meticu-
lous management of the production process. Gopinath Anbalagan and Sue
Warga took care of the foundational work of copy editing. The anonymous
referees and Oumar Ba wrote extended and astute reviews of the manuscript
that yielded a more focused, pithier, and livelier book. They have my deep
appreciation for their work. Big thanks are due to Samuel Moyn and those
who took the time to craft their endorsements. Dominic Thian masterfully
created the cover art with professionalism, detail, and skill. Certain elements
of this book were previously published in journal articles. Parts of an earlier
version of Chapter 1 appeared in Law, Culture and the Humanities 15, no. 3
(2019). Portions of Chapter 2 were published in Political Theory 46, no. 4
(2018).
Ulaş, my life partner, a fellow writer, and an exceedingly fun person, cared
so well for me during the writing and rewriting of this book that there were
times during which I forgot the location of the kitchen. He sustained his
commitment to my work across multiple intercontinental moves, read very
many drafts, halved my sorrows, and doubled my joys. Thank you for the gift
and the labor of your love. My parents-​in-​law, Hülya and Nedim, together
with Çağdaş, I thank for welcoming me as one of their own.
This work is dedicated to my mother, Regina, who alone made everything
possible. Without her unconditional love, passion for knowledge, and un-
yielding dedication, there would simply be no book at all.
 Introduction

Much has been written on concepts of the human as the active sub-
ject of modernity, on humanism, humanitarianism, and the human-
ities. But of the innumerable books . . . virtually nothing . . . traces
the historical formation of the concept of humanity as a collective
subject.1

The phrase “crimes against humanity” has acquired enormous res-

onance in the legal and moral imaginations of the post–​World War
II world.2

From Colombian drug trafficking to China’s targeting of the Uighurs, from

calls to prosecute Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro for his COVID-​19 re-
sponse to German criminal proceedings against Syrian security guards,
from forced disappearances in Venezuela to Sudanese militia violence,
from denunciations of the destruction of indigenous sites by the US-​
Mexico border wall to claims that US president Donald Trump obstructed
coronavirus testing, one concept threads through the reporting on these
issues: crimes against humanity. In the first thirty-​three weeks of the year
2020, the New York Times reported forty-​four news items such as these, all of
which revolve around the term “crimes against humanity.” “Crimes against
humanity” is now integral to political vocabularies the world over. For the
“Responsibility to Protect,” the UN Security Council, the International
Criminal Court, and the African Court of Justice and Human Rights, the
notion of crimes against humanity has also become foundational to a legal
vocabulary used in key international institutions’ policies and decisions.3 In
a world set ablaze by transnationalized civil wars, the term “crimes against
humanity” serves as a normative touchstone for diplomats, journalists, and
activists to denounce atrocious political violence and add legitimacy to calls

The Humanity of Universal Crime. Sinja Graf, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197535707.003.0001
2 The Humanity of Universal Crime

for foreign military intervention, thereby reinforcing the tightening relation-

ship between international criminal law and the ius ad bellum.4 Global in
its discursive appeal and universalizing in its moral exhortation, such claims
of a humanity injured seek to expose violence that is portrayed not just as
inflicting suffering on its concrete victims but as rupturing the normative
bonds constitutive of humankind. The notion of crimes against humanity,
to rely on David Luban’s words, has indeed “acquired enormous resonance
in the legal and moral imaginations” of the latter twentieth century, and es-
pecially in the post–​Cold War world. Since the Nuremberg Trials, crimes
against humanity have slowly displaced the crime of aggressive warfare as
the pivotal norm, calibrating a global moral compass in a discursive passage
“from aggression to atrocity,” to use Samuel Moyn’s phrase.5 And yet Talal
Asad’s observation that “the historical formation of the concept of humanity
as a collective subject” is understudied remains intact.
This book lodges its argument in between the currently ubiquitous
circulations of “crimes against humanity” and the intellectual amnesia about
the historical formation of “humanity” as the collective subject of universal
injury. It examines the more elemental idea that humanity as a whole can
be offended—​an idea that I capture with the term “universal crime”—​in the
history of broadly liberal European international thought, as its proponents
debated the legitimacy of European interference in non-​European polities
in contexts of colonial rule and postcolonial interventions. This inquiry
necessitates that we turn away from the signature individualism by which
liberal arguments on rights have gained traction in the study of political
ideas. While the genealogy of individual rights in political liberalism is well
researched, the fact that liberal thinkers have regularly drawn on notions of
universal crime has remained underexplored. The less well-​worn perspective
taken here examines the workings of “humanity” as a collective concept in
liberal arguments on world politics and on the legitimacy of coercion across
societies.
The study maintains that notions of universal crime entail the imagination
of humanity as the collective, normatively integrated, and hierarchically or-
dered subject of world politics that extends a universal yet minimal norma-
tive recognition by including everyone as at least a potential offender against
mankind. Unlike the violation of individual rights, such an offense or a crime
not only injures concrete victims but also fractures the normative ties that
bond a global community. The idea of an offense against humanity there-
fore projects mankind as a collective subject constituted by universal norms
 Introduction 3

that bind all of its members regardless of their consent. Seen through the
lens of universal crime, humanity is further a hierarchically ordered subject,
because those called offenders against mankind are subject to those alleg-
edly acting on behalf of mankind. The normative recognition bestowed upon
the offender against humanity is accordingly one of minimal extent, for this
figure represents one of mankind’s least empowered members, subordinate
to others’ allegedly legitimate coercion. It is also a recognition that is nei-
ther benevolently granted nor beneficial to the receiver. We are perhaps not
surprised that European political thinkers relied on assertions of a universal
injury to humanity to capture activities in non-​European societies, insofar
as they provided rationalizations for the legitimacy of European coercion in
faraway polities.
The book therefore details how European theorists of the international
arena in the broadly liberal tradition mobilized notions of universal crime
such that this minimal recognition coalesces with the subjection of the of-
fender against mankind to the punitive coercion of those assuming the au-
thority to enforce humanity’s law. At the center of the analysis stand the
theoretical maneuvers prompted by the political need to simultaneously ar-
ticulate humanity as fundamentally one and divided. The study shows that
the notion of universal crime projects a unique imagination of mankind as
both normatively unified across the globe and empirically divided into those
contravening mankind’s law and those complying with it. It also argues that
this projection occurs in ways that cast claims to universal crimes as the au-
thorization to act coercively in political spaces far away. When European
political and legal theorists mobilize the notion of universal crime, they as-
sert the normative unity of mankind such that anyone anywhere could offend
against its universal norms. At the same time, such arguments for a humanity
universally injured enable the claim that anyone may enforce its universal
norms. Hence, European international theorists have relied on this idea to
construct what Didier Fassin has called the “hierarchies of humanity” when
they negotiated the legitimacy of Europe’s colonial, imperial, and postcolo-
nial interventions into non-​European political societies.6
A major upshot of this study is that notions of universal crime push us
to critique strategies of inclusion as much as strategies of exclusion. As such,
this argument joins forces with recent research on the location of empire in
European political theory and with scholarship on Third World Approaches
to International Law (TWAIL) that have exceeded Uday Mehta’s indictment
of Western political thought’s “liberal strategies of exclusion” of peoples and
4 The Humanity of Universal Crime

polities necessitated by European imperial control of the globe.7 Jennifer

Pitts has accentuated the limitations of critiques that posit exclusion as the
problem by highlighting, in reference to Richard Tuck’s findings, the inclu-
sion of peoples and states in European international treaty practices as the
source of their dispossession and control. Positing exclusion of non-​Western
societies from the concepts, norms, and institutions definitive of European
modernity as the problem, Pitts argues, unduly presents inclusion as a so-
lution, because “another form of injustice [is] enabled by legal ‘inclusion’ on
unequal terms.”8 In a similar vein, TWAIL scholars such as Antony Anghie
and Sundhya Pahuja have demonstrated that it was indeed the unequal inclu-
sion of indigenous peoples and later (proto-​) Third World states in European/​
Northern institutions of international law that enabled their depiction as re-
gressive and underdeveloped, which in turn allowed for rationalizing their
disciplining and (attempted) coercive transformation.9 Adom Getachew has
further developed a forceful assessment of the twentieth-​century inclusion
of decolonized states in prevailing institutions of international society as a
vehicle for postcolonial domination. Getachew argues that the inclusion of
newly independent states in the League of Nations took the form of an “une-
qual integration” that allowed the League to continue its domination of those
states through a kind of international membership that imposed demanding
obligations and granted limited rights.10 Getachew, Pitts, and Danielle Allen
hence propose to shift our gaze away from exclusion and toward domina-
tion as a key problem, and toward types of inclusion as vehicles for such
domination.11
This study shares the impetus of these critiques of inclusion, but it differs
from those works in terms of subject matter and objective. Unlike those
works, The Humanity of Universal Crime directs its focus on deployments of
“humanity” in European international legal and political thought in order
to question its conceptual operations once it is conjoined with the idea of
“criminality” to yield the notion of “universal crime.” This elemental idea of
an offense against mankind entails asymmetric inclusions precisely via its
combination of humanity’s universality and criminality’s normative hier-
archy. The notion of universal crime modulates the universal inclusiveness
of “humanity” by casting the criminal against humanity as the least desired
member of this universal community who is subject to coercive action. Tying
humanity to criminality has allowed political and legal thinkers to harmo-
nize humanity with arguments for foreign intervention in the name of (re-​)
enforcing mankind’s universal law. Claims to universal crime hence mediate
 Introduction 5

between humanity’s universal reach and particular instances of foreign co-

ercion against particular people. The inclusion engendered by notions
of universal crime is also hegemonic in the sense that it stipulates certain
particulars as universally valid.12 European philosophers preferred to elect
behaviors unlikely to occur in European societies themselves as instantiations
of injuries to humanity, thereby reentrenching Europe’s imagined global su-
periority via claims to other people’s transgressions against mankind as a
whole. They crafted a vision of humanity in which some—​or indeed most—​
are included as potential offenders and others as the potential enforcers of
humanity’s law. Non-​European societies, by the same brushstroke, received
an “inclusion via liability” sustained by Eurocentric values and practices pos-
ited as a universal, formally egalitarian yardstick.13 Articulations of universal
crime thereby often display an inclusionary Eurocentrism as they stipulate
particular norms as universal standards applicable to all members of man-
kind everywhere. Humanity, if seen through the lens of criminality, becomes
a resource for claims to authority that functions on this very substratum of an
unequal inclusion. Such a Eurocentrism marks the pre-​and post-​nineteenth-​
century arguments on universal crime studied here. It differs, as the fol-
lowing chapters will lay out, from the exclusionary Eurocentrism that marked
nineteenth-​century theories of international law, which contracted the reach
of normative recognition and legal agency to (international) “society,” which
comprised only European “civilized” states. The distinction between these
two versions of Eurocentrism highlights the hierarchies that emerge from
normative inclusions and thereby broadens our understanding of claims to
justified inequality beyond problems of exclusion.
By implication, a distinct vision of humanity attends this universal, une-
qual inclusion. If articulated via the notion of universal crime, humanity as
a whole ceases to appear as a unified community of individuals positioned
equally to one another. Once tied to law that can be contravened, humanity
spans a spectrum of normatively ranked positions ranging from the law-​
abiding to the law-​breakers. This stratification is indeed required to maintain
a normative vision of humanity. A normative understanding of humanity
that exceeds a merely descriptive assessment—​if the latter is at all possible—​
and stipulates certain values and practices as essential to mankind neces-
sarily entails that some will fall short of conforming to them. Such a vision
of mankind therefore depends on treating the aberrant and the compliant
unequally, which renders it markedly different from an ethical imagination
of mankind as a unified community of free and equal members. The latter
6 The Humanity of Universal Crime

perspective cannot speak to what should follow a transgression against what

is deemed constitutive of the freedom and equality of all members of man-
kind, which requires the relative unfreedom and inequality of some.
The key contribution of the pages to follow is the historicized emancipa-
tion of politicized notions of “humanity” from concepts and theories that
have hitherto overshadowed it. The idea of a humanity collectively injured
has remained one of the least examined concepts in the history of political
thought. Its analysis here exceeds more commonly circulating invocations
of humanity that rely on an aesthetic, and thereby somewhat superficial,
understanding of crimes against humanity in political commentary and
scholarship. This study further requires refocusing our attention so that we
may step away from some familiar ways of thinking and, especially, change
our perspective on some dominant approaches to liberal political thought.
First, we need to pivot away from studies of the human as the bearer of in-
dividual rights—​the quintessential subject that emerged in early modern
(proleptic) liberal thought—​in order to assess the collective concepts of
“humanity” and “criminality” as they have shaped the liberal tradition
of Western political thought.14 Sparked by the twentieth-​century human
rights revolution, political theorists have produced rich work on the his-
tory of the liberal idea of individual rights, including its colonial contexts.
These studies have illuminated the virtues and vicissitudes of universal
individual rights above and beyond the disciplinary confines of contem-
porary international human rights law. Humanity as a normative subject
that surpasses the sum of its rights-​holding members, however, exceeds the
aperture of individual rights. Hence, despite the increasing prominence of
international criminal law vis-​à-​vis international human rights law since
at least the 1990s, comparable work on the political articulations of the
idea of an injury to mankind remains wanting. Second, inquiries into the
contemporary norm of “crimes against humanity” as codified in positive
international criminal law across normative political philosophy and in-
ternational jurisprudence, valuable as their theorizations of the crime have
been, also do not examine historical mobilizations of a humanity imagined
as collectively injured, nor the political projects that attended these.15 It
is for these intellectual reasons that this book unshackles the idea of an
offense against humanity from its disciplinary and historical confines in
current scholarship, a position that is perhaps the result of giving too much
credence to the precise wording of the term “crimes against humanity” as
the carrier of a broader, more elemental idea.
 Introduction 7

The Political Productivity of Universal Crime

I capture this more elemental idea of an offense against mankind with the
term “universal crime.”16 Although it is nowadays commonplace to conflate
the idea of an injury to humanity with the current phrase “crimes against
humanity” as codified in twentieth-​century international criminal law, ear-
lier European articulations of the basic idea have taken the form of phrases
such as “an offense against the whole human species” (Locke), “a wrong done
to mankind” (Gentili), and even “crimes against humanity.”17 The value of
abstracting from the current formal legal definition of “crimes against hu-
manity” to the term “universal crime” is that this distinction enables an
analysis of the more fundamental idea of an offense against mankind that
is not constrained by the technicalities of the contemporary codification
of the crime.18 The distinction between crimes against humanity and uni-
versal crime therefore widens the aperture beyond an international law that
requires application and enforcement, to include the philosophical questions
that attach to articulating humanity as the collective subject of universal
norms.19 In the same way that theorizations of human rights have surpassed
the legal discipline, this perspective historicizes our understanding of claims
to a humanity injured, thereby illuminating the ways in which the phrase
“crimes against humanity” circulates today in political discourses beyond
courtrooms and legal argument.
The book engages the idea of universal crime through its political produc-
tivity. Such a reading of norms turns away from questions of their specific
content and historical variations. I do not examine what kinds of action are
singled out by different articulations of universal crimes as injurious to man-
kind and why. Instead, the vantage point of political productivity illuminates
the ways in which the notion of universal crime shapes our vision of mankind
via the kinds of subjectivities, forms of agency, and relationships of authority
that the concept entails. As an illustration, take the concept of a right—​more
specifically, the right to private property. One way to study property rights
is to inquire about their content and how it changed over time. Questions
to ask from this perspective would be whether humans could hold property
rights over other humans and why. Another question would be why certain
jurisdictions restrict real estate ownership to a tenure of ninety-​nine years.
These are all valid questions, yet they do not exhaust all those we can ask
about property rights. Another set of questions would analyze what kinds of
identities and relationships property rights create in societies. For instance,
8 The Humanity of Universal Crime

how does a property right produce the figure of the lender and the debtor?
How does it structure the relationship between them? How are authority,
obligation, and entitlement distributed between the two? Who has the au-
thority and power to adjudicate between the two in the case of conflict? How
does society regard and protect each? It is this latter orientation that I am
bringing to the notion of universal crime in delineating how European po-
litical thinkers formative of Western ideas about international politics have
crafted the figure of the offender against mankind and how they positioned
European actors as the guardians of humanity’s law, bearing the entitlement
to wield coercion against offenders. Doing so, I take a cue from Richard Tuck’s
study of the empowering effects of the idea of subjective rights in The Rights
of War and Peace. There Tuck lays out the political productivity (although he
does not use the phrase) of early modern notions of natural rights. He argues
that the early modern and modern concept of rights enabled not only the vi-
sion of the emancipated, autonomous, and freely acting individual, but also,
in tandem with it, the concept of the modern state as it engaged in aggressive
policies of colonial overseas expansion. This imperial picture of the history
of liberal rights, however, remains incomplete without historicizing the no-
tion of universal crime in the same context of the liberal tradition. Rights
call forth an individual actor with entitlements—​entitlements that outsiders
may arrogate to themselves to enforce coercively on the right-​holder’s behalf.
Universal crimes, on the other hand, posit an injured humanity, on behalf of
which outsiders may claim to act toward concrete others for the sake of pun-
ishment. A focus on the political productivity of this elemental idea allows
for an examination of arguments on coercion, order, hierarchy, and justice in
international politics, articulated in the universalist key, that attend the his-
torical and contemporary mobilizations of “humanity.”
In addition, norms and laws are here taken as already part of the problems
they were purportedly designed to solve. Contrary to an “applied ethics”
perspective that views laws as solutions to political problems, this study
considers norms not as politically uncontaminated, corrective tools of
problem-​solving, but rather as the very form though which political projects
are coherently articulated in the first place.20 Bonnie Honig sketches a par-
ticularly useful perspective on norms and laws for this book, noting that we
can “assess new international norms, laws, and institutions not simply as
good or bad solutions to an earlier problem, but also as political maneuvers
in their own right.”21 By examining the vision of humanity entailed by the
discursive reliance on certain norms, we go beyond questioning the practices
 Introduction 9

these norms outlaw.22 Hence this analysis turns away from studies that assess
the definitional content of norms generally and of crimes against humanity
specifically.
Engaging theoretical arguments on universal crime through the lens of
their political productivity means also that I am not interested in scruti-
nizing the intentions or motivations of those invoking the concept nor in
using this scrutiny to evaluate the justness of their (coercive) actions. The
point here is not to distinguish sincere from hypocritical invocations of a
universally offended humanity. Instead, the point is to assess how influen-
tial voices have actually used articulations of universal crime and what vi-
sion of humanity and international arises from these uses. In taking this
perspective, I join critical scholars of human rights such as Nicola Perugini,
Neve Gordon, and Ayça Çubukçu, who have shown that the “misappropri-
ation” argument regarding universal norms is too facile, because it assumes
a fundamentally “good” essence of human rights that is appropriately real-
ized only in political action that improves the lot of the oppressed. Critical
legal scholars have argued that such a view of universal norms as they have
been solidified in international law misrecognizes the constitutively open
and ambivalent character of prima facie liberating norms and laws. Perugini
and Gordon’s The Human Right to Dominate turns against what they call the
“hydraulic model of human rights,” represented by Michael Ignatieff, which
depicts human rights promotion as resulting in emancipation or at least
less domination of the meek. In response, they document a global prolifer-
ation of “human rights appropriations” that consist in the convergence be-
tween liberal and conservative, emancipatory and repressive deployments
of human rights language.23 Çubukçu’s For the Love of Humanity further
debunks the “instrumentalization thesis” that she finds to underlie critiques
of the wrongful use of human rights language in the case of the 2003 US-​led
war on Iraq. Instead of distinguishing between authentic and cynical (instru-
mental) uses of human rights, Çubukçu examines the openness of human
rights vocabulary in light of the fact that both the advocacy of and opposi-
tion to this war were articulated in this vocabulary.24 Similar to these studies,
The Humanity of Universal Crime prioritizes the examination of a variety of
(European) canonical, theoretical claims to a humanity universally harmed
over an argument for the progressive, emancipatory, and protective poten-
tial of international (criminal) law enforcement. At the same time, and in
this very spirit, the approach deployed here engages the concept of humanity
in an analysis that remains otherwise foreclosed by superficial dismissals of
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Gawky. Awkward, clownish, ungainly, clumsy, raw, boorish, rustic,
green, uncouth, loutish.
Ant. Neat, handy, graceful, handsome.
Gay. Showy, bright, fine, brilliant, dashing; gaudy, flaunting, flashy,
garish, tawdry, glittering, tinsel; merry, lively, jovial, cheerful,
gleeful, blithe, sportive, airy, gladsome, frolicsome, jolly, hilarious,
light-hearted; sprightly, smart, festive, pleasuresome.
Ant. Heavy, sad, grave, dull, dowdy, somber, melancholy.
Gaze, v. Stare, scan, behold, regard, contemplate, view, gloat,
glower.
Ant. Wink, ignore, overlook, ogle, glance, disregard.
General, a. Ordinary, universal, common, commonplace,
customary, everyday, public, prevalent, familiar, normal, popular,
habitual, frequent, usual.
Ant. Singular, uncommon, exceptional, rare, unknown,
infrequent, unusual; particular, special.
Generality. Universality; bulk, mass, body, majority.
Ant. Section, minority, exception, individuality.
Generate. Beget, procreate, engender, breed, propagate; produce,
form, make, cause, bring about, originate.
Ant. Stifle, extinguish, terminate, annihilate.
Generation. Procreation; production, formation; offspring,
progeny, succession of descendants; family, stock, race, breed;
contemporaries; period, epoch, age, era, lifetime; origination.
Ant. Perpetuity, eternity, immortality; posterity.
Generic. General, common, collective, racial, comprehensive.
Ant. Particular, personal, specific, individual.
Generous. Liberal, noble, magnanimous, bountiful, free,
munificent, open-handed, disinterested, open-hearted, chivalrous,
honorable.
Ant. Avaricious, covetous, greedy, parsimonious, penurious,
petty, rapacious, stingy, close, illiberal, ignoble, mean, miserly,
niggardly, churlish, selfish.
Genial. Fostering, cheering, enlivening, encouraging, inspiriting;
cordial, hearty; cheerful, pleasant, merry, mirthful, jovial, warm,
 balmy, festive, joyous, revivifying, rejuvenating, restorative.
Ant. Cold, cutting, harsh, deleterious, noxious, deadly,
destructive, blighting, lethal, ungenial.
Genius. Bent, turn, aptitude, aptness, faculty, capacity,
endowment, talent, gift; ingenuity, invention, sagacity, intellect,
brains, parts, wit, inspiration, creative or inventive power; adept,
proficient, master, master hand; nature, character, disposition,
constitution, characteristic; spirit, tutelary deity, guardian angel;
cleverness, inventiveness, skill, creativeness, giftedness, ideality,
talents.
Ant. Stupidity, senselessness, folly, dulness, imbecility,
obtuseness, stolidity, inanity.
Genteel. Refined, polite, courteous, civil, polished, well-bred,
gentlemanly or ladylike; fashionable, stylish, elegant; graceful,
refined, aristocratic, cultivated, cultured.
Ant. Rude, clownish, uncultivated, ill-bred, boorish, uncultured,
plebeian, unfashionable, unpolished, inelegant.
Gentle. Mild, bland, moderate, kind, tender, compassionate,
indulgent, meek, soft, lenient, humane, clement, merciful, tender-
hearted, gentle-hearted; tame, docile, peaceable, calm, peaceful,
tranquil, tractable, pacific, quiet; light, zephyrlike; noble, high-
born, well-born; cultivated, refined, courteous, well-bred, polished;
placid, amiable.
Ant. Rough, rude, coarse, fierce, savage; uneven, uncut;
boisterous; shaggy, ragged, disordered; harsh, uncivil, offensive;
tempestuous, stormy; inclement.
Genuine. Pure, uncorrupt, unalloyed, unadulterated, true,
authentic, real, veritable; native, unaffected, sincere; sound,
natural.
Ant. Spurious, adulterated; fictitious; apocryphal, counterfeit,
false, artificial.
Germ. Embryo, ovule, seed-bud; origin, source, first principle;
nucleus, seed, bud.
Ant. Fruit, result, development, product, produce, issue,
outgrowth.
Germane. Related, akin, cognate, allied; pertinent, relevant,
appropriate, apposite, fitting, suitable; kindred, homogeneous.
Ant. Foreign, alien, irrelevant, unconnected.
Germinate. Bud, shoot, vegetate, sprout, push, burst forth, put
forth, spring up.
Ant. Rot, decay, spoil, die, putrefy, corrupt.
Get. Attain, earn, achieve, acquire, obtain, procure, receive, win,
secure, gain.
Ant. Abandon, lose, forfeit, surrender, forego.
Ghastly. Pale, wan, cadaverous, deathlike; grim, dismal, hideous,
terrible, horrible, frightful, shocking, grisly; spectral, pallid.
Ant. Blooming, fresh, ruddy, comely, buxom, seemly.
Ghost. Spirit, soul; apparition, specter, sprite, phantom, shade,
departed spirit; vision.
Ant. Body, organism, animal.
Gibe. Sneer, scoff, taunt, flout, jest, jeer, ridicule, deride, mock, rail
at.
Ant. Salute, compliment.
Giddy. Dizzy, vertiginous; inconstant, fickle, changeable, unsteady,
mutable, unstable, vacillating, irresolute; careless, heedless, wild,
reckless, headlong, thoughtless, light-headed, flighty; whirling,
hare-brained, beetling, flighty.
Ant. Slow, ponderous, stationary; earnest, thoughtful, steady;
low, wary, unelevated, circumspect.
Gift. Bequest, benefaction, donation, boon, grant, present, largess,
bribe, bounty, gratuity; endowment, talent, genius, faculty, power,
capacity, capability, ability, turn, forte; donation, douceur,
offering, alms, allowance, contribution, subscription, subsidy,
dower, legacy, demise.
Ant. Reservation, refusal, purchase; inanity, stupidity, forfeit,
penalty, fine, surrender; earnings, wages, remuneration,
compensation; reward, guerdon.
Gigantic. Vast, huge, colossal, enormous, giant, prodigious,
Herculean, Cyclopean, immense, tremendous.
Ant. Puny, feeble, dwarfish, petty, insignificant, pigmy.
Girdle. Gird, bind round; surround, encircle, encompass, enclose,
embrace, shut in; belt, hem, environ, engirdle, begird.
Ant. Disclose, open, disencircle, expand, ungird, disengirdle.
Girl. Damsel, lass, lassie, miss, maiden, maid, virgin, young
unmarried woman.
Gist. Essence, pith, core, marrow, substance, kernel, main point,
force, ground, foundation.
Ant. Surplusage, additament, redundancy, environment;
accessories; clothing, garb; excess, overplus.
Give. Deliver, bestow, supply, grant, cede, confer, communicate,
impart, furnish; produce, yield, surrender, concede, present,
afford, spare, accommodate with; pay, exchange; permit, allow,
vouchsafe, deign; utter, pronounce, render; occasion, cause;
devote, apply, addict, give up; sink, bend; retreat, give way, recede,
retire.
Ant. Withhold, withdraw, refuse, retain, grasp, fail, restrain,
deny, take back, remove, recall; take, receive, accept; hold,
support.
Glad. Rejoiced, pleased, gratified, delighted, happy, well-
contented; cheerful, joyous, joyful, gladsome, elated, jocund,
playful, light-hearted, cheery, animated; exhilarating, pleasing,
bright, gratifying; blithesome, gleeful.
Ant. Unhappy, sad, sorrowful, disastrous, sorry, dismal,
disappointed, discontented, uneasy.
Gladden. Delight, cheer, exhilarate, bless, rejoice, gratify, make
glad.
Ant. Grieve, disappoint, depress, dispirit, trouble, wound,
afflict, sadden, displease.
Glare. Glitter, glisten, dazzle, flare, gleam, sparkle; glower, look
fierce; beam, shine, glow, ray, radiate.
Ant. Shimmer, scintillate, waver, glimmer, smolder, burn
fitfully, flash, flicker, glister; obscure, darken.
Glassy. Vitreous; crystal, crystalline, transparent, gleaming, lucent,
brilliant, shining; smooth, polished, glacial, glabrous, brittle,
pellucid, limpid, glossy, silken.
 Ant. Rough, uneven, pliant, rugged, tough, opaque, turbid,
muddy, dull, dark.
Glaze, v. Set glass; calender, polish, burnish, gloss, furbish; become
glassy, grow dim; vitrify.
Ant. Roughen, corrugate, rumple, crumple, wrinkle, furrow.
Glimpse, n. Glance, glimmering, sight, inkling, flash, survey, trace,
tinge.
Ant. Observation, scrutiny, investigation, inspection, exposure,
analysis, examination.
Gloom. Obscurity, darkness, dimness, gloominess, cloud;
dejection, sadness, depression, despondency, melancholy;
gloaming, twilight, shadow, obscuration, dulness, cloudiness.
Ant. Light, radiance, clearness, daylight, brightness.
Glorify. Extol, exalt, magnify, bless, honor, praise; brighten, make
illustrious, elevate, ennoble, adorn; laud, signalize, aggrandize,
panegyrize.
Ant. Debase, depress, abuse, abase, defame, degrade, decry,
censure, blame, rebuke.
Glorious. Illustrious, renowned, celebrated, eminent, famed,
famous, distinguished, conspicuous; resplendent, splendid,
radiant, bright, brilliant; noble, lofty, exalted, supreme, high,
excellent, consummate.
Ant. Mean, debased, undistinguished, disgraced, unknown,
dishonorable, inglorious.
Glory. Honor, renown, celebrity, fame, praise; splendor, luster,
brightness, brilliancy, pride, effulgence; gloriousness, nobleness,
exaltation, grandeur; radiance, state, pomp, parade, magnificence.
Ant. Obscurity, cloud, ignominy, dishonor, degradation,
disgrace, shame.
Gloss, n. Interpretation, comment, note, explanation, scholium,
commentary, annotation; pretext, pretense, specious plea; luster,
polish, shine, sheen; distortion, misinterpretation, perversion,
twist, plea, speciousness.
Ant. Haze, nebulousness; truth, literalness, representation,
reality, verity, actuality, solution, exposition.
Glowing. Shining, hot, intense, ardent, excited, fiery, fervid,
fervent.
Ant. Cool, languid, dispassionate, dull, apathetic, chilling.
Glut, n. Repletion, superabundance, surplus, overplus, redundancy,
overstock, superfluity.
Ant. Scarcity, want, scantiness, dearth, failure, drainage,
exhaustion.
Glut, v. Cloy, sate, satiate, pall, surfeit; gorge, cram, stuff, fill,
overfeed, make replete.
Ant. Empty, void, disgorge, eject, discharge, vomit.
Gluttony. Voracity, greed, gormandizement, deglutition.
Ant. Abstinence, abstemiousness, temperance, frugality.
Go. Move, pass, proceed, advance, progress; walk, travel, journey,
fare; depart, set out, leave; reach, extend; contribute, concur, tend,
avail; eventuate, turn out; be esteemed, be reckoned; accept,
approve, endure, tolerate, swallow, bear; stir, budge.
Ant. Stand, stay, come, remain, rest, endure, persist, lack,
abide, fail.
Good, n. Benefit, gain, advantage, utility, profit; welfare, weal,
prosperity, interest; virtue, righteousness, excellence; abundance,
riches; boon, blessing, mercy.
Ant. Hurt, loss, detriment, injury, evil, disadvantage, ill,
calamity, affliction, infliction, curse.
Good, a. Advantageous, serviceable, profitable, useful, beneficial;
suitable, fit, convenient, proper, well-adapted; upright, virtuous,
worthy, pious, dutiful, righteous, religious; excellent, valuable,
precious, sterling, admirable, capital; kind, humane, benevolent,
friendly, favorable, gracious, merciful, obliging, well-disposed; fair,
unblemished, untarnished, unsullied, immaculate, honorable,
unimpeached; cheerful, lively, social, genial, companionable; able,
skilful, expert, ready, dexterous, well-qualified; competent;
pleasant, gratifying, agreeable; considerable; real, true, serious,
unfeigned; right, complete, sound, propitious, efficient, sufficient,
valid, actual, reputable, just.
Ant. Bad, wrong, evil, ill, wicked, depraved, imperfect,
unsound, vicious, profane, niggardly, unpropitious,
 unserviceable, unsuitable, inefficient, incompetent, inadequate,
invalid, fictitious, supposititious, inconsiderable, mean,
disreputable, disgraceful; baneful, mischievous, pernicious,
injurious, hurtful; abandoned, corrupt, immoral, unprincipled,
dishonest, unfair, villainous; unfortunate, unlucky, unhappy;
unwelcome, sad, depressing, discouraging, distressing; wretched,
sorry, abominable; inferior, defective; severe, serious, hard,
heavy.
Good-by. Farewell, adieu.
Ant. Salutation, welcome, hail, greeting.
Good-humored. Cheerful, buoyant, placid, amiable, good-
natured, good-tempered.
Ant. Cross, ill-humored, ill-natured, unamiable, petulant,
fretful, peevish.
Goodly. Graceful, comely, beautiful, good-looking; pleasant,
happy, agreeable, desirable; excellent, fair, fine; considerable.
Ant. Unpleasant, undesirable, inconsiderable, uncomely,
ungainly, clumsy, awkward.
Gorgeous. Showy, glittering, splendid, shining, magnificent,
resplendent, fine, rich, superb, dazzling; costly, grand, strong.
Ant. Poor, naked, dingy, bare, threadbare, cheap; grimy,
soiled; dull, obscure, dim.
Govern. Manage, reign over, direct, command, control, rule, sway,
influence, mold, restrain, curb, moderate, guide, supervise,
conduct; regulate, steer, bridle.
Ant. Be subject, obey, submit, comply, yield; misrule, misdirect,
misconduct.
Grace. Favor, kindness, condescension, love, benignity, good will;
piety, devotion, sanctity, devoutness, faith, holiness, religion;
mercy, pardon, forgiveness; elegance, polish, accomplishment,
refinement; beauty, symmetry, comeliness, gracefulness, ease;
short prayer; excellence, charm.
Ant. Disfavor, deformity, pride, unkindness, gawkiness,
awkwardness, inelegance.
Graceful. Beautiful, comely, elegant, stately, easy, natural,
becoming, flowing, rounded, sinuous.
 Ant. Awkward, homely, uncouth, ugly, plain, gawky,
ungraceful.
Graceless. Depraved, degenerate, corrupt, reprobate, dissolute,
profligate, lost, abandoned, hardened, obdurate, shameless,
incorrigible, wicked, irreclaimable; ungraceful, scampish, vicious,
worthless.
Ant. Graceful, virtuous, upright, conscientious, worthy;
gracious, tender-hearted.
Gracious. Benevolent, benign, kind, favorable, benignant,
compassionate, friendly, merciful, tender, lenient, condescending,
mild, gentle; affable, familiar, civil, polite, easy, courteous,
beneficent.
Ant. Haughty, discourteous, ungracious, ill-disposed, churlish,
unfriendly, impolite.
Gradation. Progress, progression, succession; graduation,
precedency, arrangement, ordination, standing, rank, degree,
stage, tier.
Ant. Equality, uniformity, fraternity; abruptness, break,
hiatus.
Gradual. Regular, progressive; slow, approximate; continuous,
unintermittent, step by step, gradational.
Ant. Sudden, momentary, instantaneous, periodic,
intermittent, recurrent, broken, discontinuous, disconnected.
Grand. Stately, lordly, princely, august, exalted, majestic, elevated,
illustrious, eminent, dignified, great, high; magnificent, glorious,
superb, splendid, lofty, noble, sublime; principal, chief, main,
leading, supreme; large, imposing, important, eventful, pompous,
gorgeous.
Ant. Little, undignified, unimposing, inferior, petty, paltry,
secondary, unimportant, insignificant, mean, common, beggarly,
contemptible, small.
Grandeur. Greatness, vastness, loftiness, elevation, immensity;
state, dignity, majesty, stateliness, pomp, augustness, splendor;
magnificence, display, ostentation.
Ant. Meanness, paltriness; humiliation, shame, disgrace.
Grandiloquence. Bombast, fustian, turgidity; verbosity,
pomposity, mouthiness, grandiosity, antiloquence, stiltedness,
euphuism.
Ant. Simplicity, naïveté, unaffectedness; vernacular.
Grant. Yield, admit, concede, allow; give, bestow, confer, deign,
vouchsafe; convey, transfer; allot, accord, cede, impart.
Ant. Withhold, withdraw, reserve, resume, deny, refuse.
Graphic. Vivid, lively, picturesque, well-drawn, striking, telling;
illustrative, pictorial, descriptive, forcible, feeling; described.
Ant. Undescriptive, unillustrative, unpicturesque; hazy,
obscure, indefinite.
Grasp. Clasp, gripe, seize, grip, grapple, catch, clutch, clinch, lay
hold of; hold, retain, comprehend.
Ant. Loose, lose, abandon, relinquish, surrender, release, miss,
misunderstand.
Grateful. Obliged, thankful, indebted, beholden; agreeable,
acceptable, pleasing, pleasant, delightful, gratifying, welcome,
charming, satisfying; delicious, savory, nice, cordial, luscious,
refreshing, invigorating; comforting, soothing, alleviating.
Ant. Unpleasant, unacceptable, disobliged, ungrateful,
disagreeable.
Gratification. Satisfaction, indulgence; enjoyment, delight,
pleasure, fruition; reward, recompense.
Ant. Pain, dislike, disappointment, abstinence, stinting,
discipline, inurement, abnegation.
Gratify. Please, delight, gladden; indulge, satisfy, humor, fulfil.
Ant. Displease, dissatisfy, stint, deprive, deny, discipline.
Gratitude. Thankfulness, obligation, gratefulness.
Ant. Thanklessness, ingratitude, ungratefulness,
unthankfulness, resentment, oblivion, indignation.
Gratuitous. Free, voluntary, uncompensated, groundless,
unwarranted, unsought, unnecessary; spontaneous, baseless,
unrecompensed.
Ant. Compulsory, involuntary, obligatory, necessitated,
warranted, well-founded; unwilling, enforced, enjoined.
Grave, a. Important, weighty, serious, cogent, momentous; sober,
sedate, thoughtful, staid, solemn; plain, subdued, quiet, silent; sad,
pressing, demure, somber, aggravated, heavy.
Ant. Joyous, merry, unimportant, facetious, ridiculous, trivial,
light, frivolous, futile, trifling, petty, slight.
Great. Large, big, vast, huge, bulky, ample, immense, gigantic,
enormous; much, excessive, high; numerous, countless;
considerable, important, weighty; distinguished, eminent, exalted,
prominent, excellent, elevated, celebrated, noted, famed,
illustrious, famous, renowned; august, grand, dignified, noble,
sublime, majestic, lofty; generous, magnanimous, chivalrous, high-
minded; sumptuous, rich, magnificent; difficult, onerous, hard,
burdensome, grievous; chief, principal, main, leading, grand;
superior, preëminent; protracted, noticeable.
Ant. Little, narrow, scanty, puny, few, short, mean, ignoble,
weak, unimportant.
Greediness. Avidity, hunger, voracity, ravenousness, gluttony;
eagerness, longing, greed, intense desire; grasping, avarice,
rapacity, selfishness.
Ant. Generosity, prodigality, benevolence.
Greedy. Voracious, ravenous, insatiable, gluttonous, insatiate,
rapacious; eager, desirous; selfish, grasping, avaricious; hungry.
Ant. Abstemious, abstinent, contented, apathetic, indifferent;
generous, unselfish.
Grief. Bitterness, misery, agony, anguish, heartache, heartbreak;
trial, grievance; melancholy, sadness, sorrow, trouble, tribulation,
woe, mourning, affliction, distress, regret.
Ant. Happiness, joy, elation, delight, hilarity, exultation, cheer,
mirth, gaiety.
Grievance. Hardship, wrong, injury, burden, oppression;
affliction, trial, sorrow, grief, distress, woe; complaint, trouble,
injustice.
Ant. Congratulation, boon, benefit, rejoicing, privilege,
alleviation, riddance, disburdenment.
Grieve. Afflict, pain, hurt, distress, sadden, agonize; sorrow,
mourn, lament, suffer, bewail; burden, annoy, wound, complain,
 deplore.
Ant. Ease, soothe, console, please, rejoice, exult, alleviate,
gratify, content, satisfy.
Grievous. Sad, heavy, distressing, afflictive, painful, deplorable,
lamentable; hurtful, injurious, noxious, mischievous, detrimental,
calamitous; atrocious, heinous, outrageous, intolerable, dreadful,
flagrant, aggravated; sorrowful, baleful, burdensome, unhappy,
disastrous.
Ant. Pleasant, joyous, delightful, glad, consolatory, acceptable,
welcome, grateful, light, trivial, trifling.
Grim. Fierce, ruthless, cruel, savage, ferocious; frightful, horrible,
hideous, dire, horrid, appalling, terrific, dreadful; ugly, ghastly,
sullen, stern.
Ant. Mild, attractive, benign, placid, docile.
Gross. Great, large, big, bulky; dense, thick; coarse, rough, rude,
unrefined, unseemly, unbecoming; indelicate, sensual, impure,
vulgar, low, broad; enormous, flagrant, shameful, outrageous,
grievous; palpable, manifest, glaring; whole, total, entire,
aggregate; vicious, animal, bloated.
Ant. Partial, component; net; refined, pure; elegant, delicate,
subtle.
Grotesque. Fantastic, whimsical, fanciful, droll, odd, unnatural,
strange, wild, bizarre, extravagant; ludicrous, absurd, ridiculous,
antic, burlesque; quaint, old, archaic, distorted, caricatured.
Ant. Classic, chaste, graceful, fine, severe, regular, fashionable,
symmetrical, typical, formal, normal.
Ground. Basis, base, groundwork, support, foundation; sod, soil,
clod, earth, loam, turf; region, territory, country, land, domain;
estate, acres, field; motive, consideration, reason, cause, account,
inducement; premise, plea.
Ant. Superstructure, statement, argument, inference,
deduction; product, development, result, effect; ocean, sea, deep,
main, waters.
Grounded. Rooted, established, initiated, inaugurated, trained,
prepared, fixed, set; indoctrinated.
 Ant. Ungrounded, unprepared, uninitiated, baseless,
unfounded, groundless, unauthorized.
Groundless. Vain, supposititious, unfounded, false, baseless,
fanciful, chimerical, gratuitous.
Ant. Well-founded, authoritative, substantial, actual, authentic.
Group. Cluster, collection, assemblage, order, bunch, knot, class,
clump, assembly, collocation.
Ant. Individual, crowd, isolation, medley, confusion;
dispersion, distribution, scattering.
Grovel. Creep, crawl, sneak, be prone, fawn, cringe, lie, grub,
wallow.
Ant. Soar, aspire, mount, rise, domineer, intimidate, dictate,
browbeat.
Grow. Enlarge, increase, swell, expand, extend, augment; vegetate,
shout, sprout, germinate; advance, wax, progress, improve; adhere;
raise, produce, cultivate; accrue, become, develop, amplify.
Ant. Diminish, recede, contract, fail, stop, die, wane, decline,
subside, ebb, decay, depreciate, crumble, weaken.
Grudge, n. Hatred, pique, rancor, spite, malice, malevolence;
grievance, aversion, dissatisfaction, discontent, refusal.
Ant. Welcome, satisfaction, approval, contentment,
benefaction, complacency, bestowal.
Guardian. Warden, keeper, protector, defender, preserver;
custodian, conservator.
Ant. Pupil, ward; traitor, betrayer; charge, minor.
Guess. Conjecture, divine, surmise, mistrust, suspect; find out,
solve, penetrate, fathom; suppose, think, believe, fancy, imagine;
hazard, risk.
Ant. Examine, prove, investigate, establish, demonstrate,
deduce, elaborate, illustrate.
Guide, n. Director, conductor, pilot; mentor, monitor, adviser,
instructor, counselor; clue, key; itinerary.
Ant. Follower, disciple, imitator, pupil.
Guide, v. Lead, conduct, pilot; direct, rule, manage, regulate,
govern, control, steer; superintend, influence, train.
 Ant. Mislead, misconduct, misdirect, mismanage, misregulate,
misguide, miseducate, betray, deceive, impose upon, disappoint,
cheat.
Guile. Cunning, craft, subtlety, artifice, artfulness, deceit, duplicity,
deception, fraud, wiles, trickery; treachery, insidiousness,
hypocrisy.
Ant. Frankness, simplicity, honesty, candor, generosity,
sincerity, truth, veracity.
Guilt. Guiltiness, culpability, criminality; wrong, offensiveness,
wickedness, ill desert, iniquity, sin, offense.
Ant. Sinlessness, innocence, purity, godliness, righteousness.
Guise. Aspect, appearance, garb, dress, form, shape, figure,
manner, mode, fashion; practice, habit, custom; semblance, plea,
demeanor, mien.
Ant. Character, person, individual, sentiment, disposition,
opinion, life, mind, soul, self.
Gumption. Shrewdness, discernment, sagacity, skill, cleverness,
ability, capacity, power, penetration, common sense.
Gush, v. Burst, stream, flow, rush, spout, pour out, flow out;
sentimentalize, be overeffusive.
Ant. Drip, drop, filter, ooze, percolate, dribble, drain, strain,
trickle.
Gust. Taste, relish, zest, liking; pleasure, enjoyment, delight,
delectation, gratification; turn, fancy, favor; blast, squall; fit,
outburst, burst, paroxysm; puff, breeze, gale.
Ant. Calm, tranquillity, subsidence, composure, restraint,
zephyr; insipidity, tastelessness.
 H

Habiliment. Dress, garments, clothes, apparel, vesture, raiment,

habit, costume, vestment, garb, robes, uniform, clothing.
Ant. Undress, nudity, bareness, deshabille, divestment.
Habit. Condition, constitution, temperament; way, manner; dress,
garb, habiliment; habituation, familiarity, association, inurement;
routine, rule, custom, fashion, practice, system, habitude, use,
usage, wont.
Ant. Dishabituation, inexperience, inconversance, desuetude,
disuse, breach, infringement, disusage.
Habitation. Abode, dwelling, lodging, domicil, headquarters,
quarters, dwelling-place.
Habitual. Usual, customary, wonted, common, accustomed,
regular, ordinary, familiar, everyday, perpetual.
Ant. Irregular, extraordinary, unusual, occasional, exceptional,
rare.
Haggard. Wild, wayward, intractable, refractory, unruly, untamed;
gaunt, lean, spare, meager, worn, wasted, raw-boned; attenuated,
wrinkled, ghastly, hollow-eyed.
Ant. Sleek, smug, plump, chubby, comely, sightly, pretty.
Hail. Accost, address, salute, greet, welcome, call, speak, signal.
Ant. Ignore, avoid, pass, cut, disdain, insult, rebuff.
Halcyon. Calm, quiet, placid, still, peaceful, tranquil, undisturbed,
unruffled, palmy, serene, happy, golden, balmy.
Ant. Stormy, tempestuous, troublous, boisterous, blustering,
turbulent, violent.
Hale. Healthy, sound, strong, robust, hearty, hardy, well.
 Ant. Feeble, sickly, weak.
Half, n. Bisection, dimidiation, moiety.
Ant. Integrity, total, whole, entirety, sum, amount, aggregate,
quantity, number.
Hallow. Consecrate, dedicate, sanctify, devote, make holy;
reverence, venerate, honor, respect, pay homage to, enshrine.
Ant. Desecrate, profane, execrate, blaspheme, abominate.
Halt. Stop, hold, stand, pull up; limp, hobble; rest, falter, hamper,
stammer, demur, dubitate, pause, stand still, hesitate.
Ant. Advance, flow, speed; determine, decide, conclude, finish.
Hamper. Hinder, fetter, entangle, shackle, clog, encumber,
restrain, impede.
Ant. Free, liberate, loose; expedite, hasten, speed, accelerate.
Hand. Palm and fingers; side, direction, part; skill, dexterity,
talent, ability, faculty; handiwork, workmanship; management,
course; agency, share, intervention, participation; laborer,
workman, operative, artificer, artisan, craftsman, employee;
possession, power, control; index, pointer, indicator; chirography,
handwriting; influence; handful, bunch.
Ant. Employer.
Handle. Touch, feel, take; manage, use, wield; treat, discuss,
discourse; deal with; operate, manipulate.
Ant. Drop, bungle, mismanage, botch, spoil, mar.
Handsome. Comely, stately, well-formed, fine-looking; easy,
graceful, becoming, appropriate; generous, liberal, noble,
magnanimous, disinterested; ample, sufficient, large, plentiful;
beautiful, pretty, lovely, elegant.
Ant. Uncomely, ill-looking, ungenerous, illiberal, ugly,
unsightly, ghastly.
Handy. Dexterous, adroit, skilful, skilled, ready, clever, expert;
convenient, near, at hand.
Ant. Remote, inconvenient, unwieldy, cumbrous, awkward,
useless, unhandy.
Hang. Rest, lean, depend, poise, suspend; attach, incline, drop,
decline, droop; execute; drape, adorn; dangle, be suspended,
adhere, rely, stick, cling; hover, float, play; attend.
Ant. Stand, recline, lean, lie; prop, support, uphold.
Happen. Chance, occur, befall, bechance, betide, fall, come to pass,
fall out, take place, supervene.
Ant. Miss, omit, fail, pass, spare, pass by, neglect, discard.
Happiness. Delight, joy, pleasure, satisfaction, comfort, bliss,
triumph, mirth, gaiety, ecstasy, gladness, rejoicing, rapture,
contentment, merriment, blessedness, felicity, cheer, enjoyment,
well-being, light-heartedness, cheerfulness, brightness; beatitude,
prosperity.
Ant. Grief, sorrow, anguish, trouble, mourning, misfortune,
affliction, disaster, woe, agony, distress, torture, torment,
melancholy.
Happy. Gay, glad, joyous, cheerful, blessed, delighted, joyful, jolly,
successful, rejoicing, blissful, lucky, merry, fortunate, rejoiced,
jocund, buoyant, felicitous, bright, blithesome, sunny, cheering,
cheery, sprightly, delightful, smiling, mirthful, pleased,
prosperous, rapturous; light-hearted, blest, gladdened, charmed;
ready, expert, apt, skilful, adroit, able, dexterous; seasonable,
opportune, befitting, pertinent, well-timed; auspicious, propitious,
favorable.
Ant. Unlucky, unfortunate, unsuccessful, infelicitous, sorrowful,
sorry, dull, lugubrious, disappointed, desponding, unhappy.
Harangue. Speech, public or formal address, oration; bombast,
declamation, tirade, screed; effusion, rant.
Ant. Mumble, drawl, insinuation, suggestion, stammering,
reasoning, blandiloquence, stuttering.
Harass. Fatigue, tire, weary, annoy, exhaust; vex, plague, worry,
distress, trouble, molest, disturb, torment, harry; jade, tease,
irritate, chafe, harrow, pester, perplex.
Ant. Relieve, refresh, comfort, solace, soothe, animate, inspirit.
Harbinger. Herald, forerunner, precursor, announcer.
Ant. Reporter, narrator, follower, attendant, historian, relator.
Harbor, n. Asylum, refuge, shelter, cover, retreat, sanctuary,
resting-place; port, haven, destination, home, anchorage.
 Ant. Labor, toil, peril, exposure, roving, wandering, voyage,
roaming, pilgrimage.
Harbor, v. Shelter, lodge, protect; entertain, indulge, foster,
cherish; secrete; accommodate, encourage.
Ant. Eject, expel, discard, discourage, stifle, exclude, banish,
dismiss.
Hard. Firm, solid, compact, impenetrable, rigid, unyielding;
difficult, embarrassing, knotty, puzzling, intricate, perplexing;
laborious, arduous, toilsome, wearying, fatiguing; unkind,
insensible, cruel, oppressive, rigorous, severe, exacting, inflexible,
obdurate, callous, unfeeling, unsympathetic; grievous, distressing,
painful, calamitous, unpleasant, disagreeable; inclement, stormy,
cold, severe, tempestuous; harsh, sour, acid, rough; coarse,
unpalatable; unfavorable, unprosperous, unpropitious; stiff,
unnatural, forced, constrained, ungraceful; excessive, intemperate;
inexplicable, flinty, dense, stubborn, hardy, hardened.
Ant. Soft, fluid, liquid, elastic, brittle, easy, penetrable, mild,
lenient, tender, ductile, simple, uninvolved, intelligible,
perspicuous.
Harden. Indurate, make hard; habituate, inure, season, form,
train, accustom, discipline; fortify, strengthen, steel, nerve, brace;
scar, make callous, make obdurate; consolidate, compact.
Ant. Disinure, relax, enervate, debilitate, soften, dishabituate,
melt, mollify, vaporize, colliquate.
Hardihood. Firmness, fortitude, resolution, mettle, pluck,
manhood, courage, bravery, boldness, intrepidity, audacity,
decision, determination; effrontery, assurance, brass.
Ant. Weakness, effeminacy; timidity, fear; indecision;
cowardice.
Hardly. Scarcely, barely, just; severely, rigorously, unkindly,
roughly, cruelly; merely, narrowly.
Ant. Fully, amply, easily, abundantly, largely.
Hardship. Toil, fatigue, weariness; grievance, suffering, trial,
affliction, trouble, misfortune, calamity, burden, hardness;
annoyance, infliction, endurance.
 Ant. Pleasure, amusement, alleviation, recreation,
gratification, relief, assuagement, facilitation, treat, boon.
Hardy. Bold, intrepid, resolute, brave, daring, valiant, heroic,
manly, stout-hearted, courageous; strong, robust, firm, lusty, stout,
healthy, rigorous, hale, sound, hearty; inured, vigorous.
Ant. Weak, uninured, irresolute, delicate, debilitated, tender,
fragile, frail, infirm.
Harm. Injury, hurt, detriment, mischief, damage, prejudice,
disadvantage; evil, criminality, wrong, wickedness; misfortune, ill,
mishap.
Ant. Benefit, boon, amelioration, improvement, compensation,
reparation, remedy, healing.
Harmless. Innocuous, innocent, innoxious, gentle, inoffensive;
unhurt, unharmed, uninjured.
Ant. Noxious, hurtful, nocuous, savage, cruel, deadly,
mischievous, violent, pernicious, destructive.
Harmonious. Concordant, harmonic, consonant; melodious,
tuneful, musical, dulcet, mellifluous; correspondent, consistent,
symmetrical, congruent; friendly, cordial, amicable, fraternal,
brotherly, neighborly; accordant, proportioned, uniform, peaceful,
agreeable.
Ant. Discordant, incongruous, unshapely, harsh,
disproportioned, unmelodious, sharp, grating, riotous,
unfriendly, unpeaceful, quarrelsome.
Harmony. Concord, amity, accordance, unison, consent,
unanimity, unity, accord, agreement, uniformity, symmetry, union,
conformity, consonance, congruity, concurrence, consistency.
Ant. Hostility, separation, discord, warfare, battle, variance,
conflict, disagreement, disunion, dissension, contention,
antagonism, contest, controversy, schism, opposition,
incongruity, difference, inconsistency, disproportion.
Harsh. Rough, sour, crabbed, tart, hard, biting, sharp, corrosive,
caustic; grating, discordant, jarring; morose, severe, stern, austere,
acrimonious, ill-natured, unkind, unfeeling; rude, uncivil, blunt,
ungracious, gruff, brutal, bearish; abusive, rigorous, rancorous.
 Ant. Smooth, lenient, melodious, genial, kindly, suave, bland,
gentle.
Harvest. Fruit, crop, increase, yield, result, return, proceeds,
product, growth, ingathering, harvest-feast, harvest-festival,
harvest-time, harvest-home.
Haste. Despatch, celerity, speed, promptitude, quickness; hurry,
precipitation, vehemence, precipitance; expedition, excitement,
heedlessness, swiftness.
Ant. Delay, slowness, tardiness, coolness, reflection,
moderation, steadiness.
Hasten. Expedite, despatch, accelerate, speed, hurry, hustle,
quicken, precipitate, press on, urge forward; haste, make haste;
urge, press.
Ant. Retard, impede, obstruct, demur, halt, hesitate.
Hasty. Quick, swift, fleet, fast, rapid, brisk, speedy; cursory, slight,
hurried, superficial; headlong, rash, reckless, precipitate,
indiscreet, thoughtless; passionate, touchy, irritable, petulant,
waspish, excitable, fiery, hot, irascible, peppery, fretful; impetuous,
crude, incomplete, immature, undeveloped.
Ant. Tardy, slow, leisurely, careful, reflective, developed,
complete, matured, elaborate, thoughtful, deliberate.
Hateful. Malignant, malevolent, malign; abominable, detestable,
odious, execrable, abhorrent, horrid, shocking, accursed,
damnable; loathsome, disgusting, nauseous, foul, repulsive,
offensive, vile, obnoxious, revolting, repugnant; heinous.
Ant. Lovely, loveable, desirable, delightful, attractive, enticing,
enjoyable, tempting, pleasant.
Hatred. Enmity, dislike, hostility, anger, abhorrence, aversion,
spite, revenge, grudge, ill will, malice, antipathy, resentment,
animosity, malignity, repugnance, rancor, detestation,
malevolence.
Ant. Friendship, love, benevolence, charity, beneficence.
Have. Hold, occupy, own, possess, be in possession of, regard,
consider, esteem; wish, require, desire; obtain, get, acquire,
receive, gain; be obliged, be under necessity; take, accept; bear,
bring forth; feel, entertain, enjoy, keep.
 Ant. Want, need, lose, discard, forego, miss, reject, covet,
desire.
Havoc. Ravage, devastation, destruction, desolation, waste, ruin;
carnage, slaughter; demolition, wreck.
Ant. Conservation, enrichment, enhancement, augmentation,
development, prosperity, productiveness, luxuriance.
Hazard, n. Chance, peril, venture, risk, casualty, accident,
contingency, danger, jeopardy, fortuity.
Ant. Safeguard, protection, security, surety, certainty,
necessity, plan, assurance, safety; warrant, calculation, law.
Hazy. Foggy, misty, nebulous, filmy, gauzy, cloudy, murky, gloomy.
Ant. Clear, crystalline, diaphanous, transparent, bright,
luminous, shining.
Head. Top, summit, acme; front, fore part; rise, commencement,
source, origin, beginning; chief part, principal part; person,
individual; chief, chieftain, leader, commander, master,
superintendent, director; first place; understanding, mind,
thought, intellect; topic, subject; class, section, department,
category, division; seat of the brain; crown, ruler, crisis, gathering,
culmination, leadership, guide.
Ant. Tail, bottom, foot, follower, servant, retainer, subordinate,
subordination, inferiority, body, bulk, substance, continuation.
Heal. Cure, remedy, restore; reconcile, compose, soothe,
harmonize, settle; be cured, get well; repair, assuage, cicatrize.
Ant. Harm, hurt, wound, pierce, ulcerate.
Healthy. Healthful, sanitary, hearty, hygienic, well, vigorous,
strong, sound, wholesome, hale, salutary, salubrious, invigorating,
bracing.
Ant. Unhealthy, noxious, pernicious, insalubrious; ill, sickly,
unhealthful, weak, diseased, feeble, wasted, emaciated, fainting,
failing, unsound, worn, frail, fragile, exhausted, delicate.
Heart. Organ of circulation; interior, center, essence, core, kernel;
disposition, mind, will, inclination, intent, passion, purpose; spirit,
courage, firmness, fortitude, resolution; love, affection, feeling,
emotion; conscience, character, moral nature; nucleus, hardihood,
life, benevolence.