Hyperdescent

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The practice of classifying a child of mixed race ancestry into the more socially dominant of the parents' races. uncountable

    "In contrast, American Indians have generally been identified by hyperdescent, a principle that stipulates some minimum amount of ancestry as a necessary condition for qualification."

Example

More examples

"In contrast, American Indians have generally been identified by hyperdescent, a principle that stipulates some minimum amount of ancestry as a necessary condition for qualification."

Etymology

From hyper- + descent.

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