mulatto
Americannoun
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mulattoes,
plural
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mulattos
plural
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Anthropology. (not in technical use) the offspring of one white parent and one Black parent.
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Older Use: Offensive. a person who has both Black and white ancestors.
adjective
noun
adjective
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mulatto
First recorded in 1585–95; from Spanish mulato “young mule,” equivalent to mul(o) mule 1 + -ato of unclear origin
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Explanation
The noun mulatto is an outdated term for someone with one black parent and one white parent. This word is now considered to be offensive. It was common to describe a person with both black and white ancestry as a mulatto during the period of slavery in the United States. Because of its dehumanizing roots and usage, this word has fallen out of favor. Today, people are more likely to use terms like multiracial or mixed race — or simply to identify their specific cultural and ethnic heritage.
Vocabulary lists containing mulatto
Twelve Years a Slave
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Black Like Me
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Vocabulary from Readings 4, Unit 4
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
One archive lists her as mulatto, or mixed race, though her white father was unnamed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026
He was “small for his age; he was a very light mulatto, with brown curly hair, thick lips and a defiant nose,” she wrote.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 10, 2022
A white doctor falls in love with a mulatto woman who has returned to Boston to raise money for a Southern school.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2019
One tamale looks volcanic, the masa haunted by a rust-red ombre of mole poblano, a meld of raisins, almonds, plantains, chocolate, cinnamon, sesame seeds and mulatto, pasilla and ancho chiles, gradations of sweetness and heat.
From New York Times ● Nov. 17, 2016
Second, Third and Fourth avenues were inhabited mostly by Coloureds, the mulatto race which came into being nine months after white settlers arrived in South Africa in 1652—without women.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
The U. S. Census counts 20% of Negroes as mulattoes.
From Time Magazine Archive
On the one side are the prosperous and well-educated blacks and mulattoes with clipped British accents and comfortable homes in places like the Blue Mountains overlooking Kingston.
From Time Magazine Archive
The leader in Jamaica and possibly of the entire Caribbean, if the blacks and mulattoes ever decide to work in harmony, is Norman Washington Manley, K.C.,
From Time Magazine Archive
Most of Luanda's 50,000 Europeans, some of its 50,000 mulattoes, and almost none of its 120,000 Africans responded.
From Time Magazine Archive
I am going to pray to St. Martin de Porres, the patron saint of mulattoes, for our cause in the factory.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
Next were the mulattos, persons of mixed European and African ancestry, and enslaved Africans.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2012
Their ideas grow out of a traditional obsession with the legal status of free blacks and mulattos in the decades before the Civil War.
From Salon ● May 4, 2011
Ms. Hills also spoke of the dance’s African-Argentine roots among the local mulattos and immigrants, principally in Rio de la Plata, a Buenos Aires suburb.
From New York Times ● Aug. 10, 2010
Population: Spanish whites 950,000, mulattos 300,000, blacks 50,000.
From Time Magazine Archive
"Be it enacted, &c. that all the lands belonging to the Indians and mulattos in Mashpee be erected into a district, by the name of Mashpee."
From Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Marshpee Tribe Or, the Pretended Riot Explained by William Apess
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