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

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

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 Strang, Herbert

With me was a young Manhiki half-caste named Allan Strickland; he was about twenty-two years of age and one of the most perfect specimens of athletic manhood in the South Pacific.

From By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories by Becke, Louis

They formed a motley group, in every variety of costume: some were whites, others brown men and blacks, with two or three half-caste Indians.

From In the Wilds of Florida A Tale of Warfare and Hunting by Davis, John Steeple