"the Humanities"?

"The word humanities emerged after 1850 in America as a neologism to describe a kind of elevating, holistic study of literature, music, and art. It derived from the academic meaning of the fifteenth-century word humanity, which distinguished the secular study of Greek and Latin texts (literae humaniores) from theological studies: humanity contrasted with divinity. Humanity in the antebellum era meant primarily study of Greek and Latin texts. But after 1850 it acquired it plural form and hitched itself to those studies that bestowed liberal culture."

-- The Culture of Classicism, Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life 1780-1910, Caroline Winterer, 2002, p. 118.