Half-caste

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person of mixed racial descent. derogatory

    "AO Neville, the Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia until the 1930s, railed against the risk of the creation of a ‘third race’ of half-castes."

  2. 2
    an offensive term for the offspring of parents of different racial groups or cultures wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Of mixed racial descent. derogatory, not-comparable

    "It was the racist, settler colonialism that created whiteness, that created blackness, half-caste, quarter-caste, octoroon, that saw mixed-race people as a third race."

Example

More examples

"It was the racist, settler colonialism that created whiteness, that created blackness, half-caste, quarter-caste, octoroon, that saw mixed-race people as a third race."

Etymology

From half- + caste.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.