CANAANITE (feminine) — the Old Testament's own ethnonym for the land's pre-Israelite inhabitants, a thousand years obsolete as a live term of address by the first century (replaced in ordinary speech by 'Phoenician' or a city name). ⚠ Mark's parallel account of the same encounter (7:26, not yet on these pages) calls the woman 'a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth' — a live, contemporary label. Matthew reaches instead for the archaic, loaded term — Israel's ancient dispossessed enemy — and puts it on the one Gentile who, in this Gospel, out-argues Jesus and is commended above Israel for her faith (Matthew 15:22-28). The word choice is doing theological work Mark's more neutral label does not attempt. → first discussed at Matt 15:22