Mameluco

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A child born of one white parent and one Brazilian Indian parent.

    "The Tupi, who a few years earlier had flourished along these opulent coasts, had already been driven farther and farther back into the forest, and appeared in the records […] only as occasional domestic slaves and already mainly present as mixed blood mamelucos, the first children of multiracial Brazil."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Born of a white father and American Indian mother, particularly in South America. dated, historical

Example

More examples

"The Tupi, who a few years earlier had flourished along these opulent coasts, had already been driven farther and farther back into the forest, and appeared in the records […] only as occasional domestic slaves and already mainly present as mixed blood mamelucos, the first children of multiracial Brazil."

Etymology

Borrowed from Brazilian Portuguese mameluco, from Arabic مَمْلُوك (mamlūk, “slave”). Doublet of mameluke.

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