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.

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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

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adjective

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

Etymology

Origin of half-caste

First recorded in 1785–95

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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

The Russians it appears are affording religious instruction in the establishment of schools for the education of half-caste children, with those of the natives in their Factories on the North-west coast of North America.

From The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America and Frequent Excursions Among the North-West American Indians, In the Years 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823. by John West

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

His garrison numbered only fifty men all told, half of them being Dutch deserters and the remainder half-caste topasses, with only two English officers, Lieutenant Elliott and Sergeant Bowler.

From In Clive's Command A Story of the Fight for India by Herbert Strang

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