half-caste

American  

[haf-kast, hahf-kahst] / ˈhæfˌkæst, ˈhɑfˌkɑst /

noun

1. a contemptuous term used to refer to a person of mixed racial or ethnic descent.

2. a contemptuous term used to refer to a person of mixed European and Hindu or European and Muslim parentage.

3. a contemptuous term used to refer to a person descended from parents of two different social strata.

---

adjective

1. of or relating to a half-caste.

half-caste British  

noun

1. a person having parents of different races, esp the offspring of a European and an Indian

---

adjective

1. of, relating to, or designating such a person

Etymology

Origin of half-caste

First recorded in 1785–95

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

half-caste

“Like the other half-caste children,” Gyasi writes, “he could not fully claim either half of himself, neither his father’s whiteness nor his mother’s blackness. Neither England nor the Gold Coast.”

From Washington Post ● Jun. 13, 2016

Unlike the British, early Dutch colonizers were not discouraged from marrying native women and no social ostracism came to them or their half-caste children.

From Time Magazine Archive

A young creole named Chofré, well known in Manila, went out to Mariquina to take photographic views with a foreign half-caste friend of his named Augustus Morris.

From The Philippine Islands by John Foreman

Him run longa gully, catch up horse by ole man blackbutt, ride longa gorge same debble chase him,' reported the half-caste.

From In the Roaring Fifties by Edward Dyson

Then she passed into a fitful slumber, and as Jim Dennis had found Sal, so the half-caste found her.

From Settling Day by Nat Gould