octoroon

[ok-tuh-roon]

noun

Older Use: Offensive.

1. a person having one-eighth Black ancestry, with one Black great-grandparent; the offspring of a quadroon and a white person.

octoroon

/ ˌɒktəˈruːn /

noun

1. a person having one quadroon and one White parent and therefore having one-eighth Black blood Compare quadroon

Word History and Origins

Origin of octoroon¹

An Americanism dating back to 1855–60; octo- + (quad)roon

Word History and Origins

Origin of octoroon¹

C19: _octo- + -roon as in _quadroon

Example Sentences

George doesn’t know at first that Zoe is an octoroon, meaning she’s 1/8th Black, but he refuses to let miscegenation law stand in the way of his heart’s desire.

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Among mixed bloods, one never made the mistake of calling an octoroon a quadroon or a quadroon a mulatto, although all mixed bloods were loosely called mulattoes.

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She recalled a comedy writer who told her that her and Anderson’s children were “quadroons or octoroons” — “because people think that being aggressive is funny, I guess.”

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An octoroon woman in Bastrop had passed and married a white farmer.

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The first one labeled him as “white,” while the second, which his mother demanded as a corrective, put him down as “octoroon.”

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