Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A person having white ancestors except for one black great-grandparent. Used especially as a classification under certain European colonial legal systems and now considered offensive.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The offspring of a quadroon and a white person; a person having one eighth negro blood.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The offspring of a quadroon and a white person; a mestee.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun someone having one-eighth black
ancestry
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an offspring of a quadroon and a white parent; a person who is one-eighth black
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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One house in particular was called the octoroon house.
Twice Sold, Twice Ransomed Autobiography of Mr. and Mrs. L. P. Ray 1924
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The octoroon was a large man, of about the size of the third lieutenant, and he could have made a good deal of mischief if he had been so disposed.
Stand By The Union Oliver Optic 1859
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President, and Declaration of Independence author as his slave, concubine, mother of his unacknowledged illegitimate "octoroon" children, etc.
Who Speaks for Sally Hemings? Anxious Black Woman 2008
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I speculate that the word used in that other sense is a typical Oz contraction, of "octoroon" (cf. "ocky", also in AND, for "octopus"), ignorantly and locally applied to East Asiatics instead of "A person of one-eighth Aboriginal descent" (AND).
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She tells of an "octoroon" who "passed" as white, only to be killed by her husband when found out.
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Slide 12: 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson • Homer Plessy (an "octoroon" could not ride in white railway car) • Separate but equal • One drop rule of hypodescent • Ratification of spatial segregation legal enforcement of Jim Crow laws 12
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Slide 12: 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson • Homer Plessy (an "octoroon" could not ride in white railway car) • Separate but equal • One drop rule of hypodescent • Ratification of spatial segregation legal enforcement of Jim Crow laws 12
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Slide 12: 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson • Homer Plessy (an "octoroon" could not ride in white railway car) • Separate but equal • One drop rule of hypodescent • Ratification of spatial segregation legal enforcement of Jim Crow laws 12
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Slide 12: 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson • Homer Plessy (an "octoroon" could not ride in white railway car) • Separate but equal • One drop rule of hypodescent • Ratification of spatial segregation legal enforcement of Jim Crow laws 12
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Video: analysis from the cake wrecks blog. tags: tales of adventure and octoroon frosting
yarb commented on the word octoroon
Citation on quadroon.
September 6, 2008
bilby commented on the word octoroon
Is this offensive?
June 9, 2016
alexz commented on the word octoroon
quick web search says yes.
page 21 of https://books.google.ca/books?id=21eFAwAAQBAJ
June 9, 2016
vendingmachine commented on the word octoroon
History, unfortunately, reminds us of the one-drop rule:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
I read this book a couple of years ago. Excellent.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/587123.Who_is_Black_
June 10, 2016