Paleface

noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A white person, a person of European descent, particularly in Native American contexts. derogatory, ethnic, offensive, slur

    "Dere is Great Wicked Spirit, too... Heart grow hard. Great pleasure was to kill pale-face. Dat feeling last, Blossom, till I see you. Feel like fader to you, and don't want your scalp... Still want all udder pale-face scalp. Want Bourdon scalp much as any."

  2. 2
    Alternative letter-case form of paleface. alt-of
  3. 3
    (slang) a derogatory term for a white person (supposedly used by North American Indians) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
american indianamerindang mohangrezaustralian aboriginebalanda

Example

More examples

"Dere is Great Wicked Spirit, too... Heart grow hard. Great pleasure was to kill pale-face. Dat feeling last, Blossom, till I see you. Feel like fader to you, and don't want your scalp... Still want all udder pale-face scalp. Want Bourdon scalp much as any."

Etymology

From pale + face, a supposed calque from a Native American language. First appears in print c. 1797.

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