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Black woman

Black woman

282 1.0
A woman who has dark skin and whose family comes from Africa
  • noun
translation icon : mujer negra
  • It's inspiring to see a Black woman succeed in her career despite many challenges.
  • white and Black women
  • young Black woman
  • middle-class Black women

And she was a black woman in this woke era.

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Examples

  • All Black women are exhausted.

  • My colleague and I are both Black women and self-identify as writers.

    Academic text (2012)
  • And would it be a good thing if more black women married across group lines?

  • We're in here today with two lovely black ladies, Black women, black girl magic business owners.

  • Do you know all the questions Black women have for Black men?

    Fiction book (1993)
  • And she would be the first Black woman to sit on the US Supreme Court.

  • Joe Biden is going to pick a black woman who is also qualified.

  • That she was a young Black woman, just like you guys, and that she deserves to be seen, and that she deserves to be heard.

  • It was wonderful to see a black woman running for vice president.

  • I'd love for you all to tell me why it's important that black women define themselves as feminists.

Surface Forms

Black woman singular
Black women plural

Morphology

black + woman

The meaning 'a woman who is Black' is a straightforward composition of the adjective 'black' (denoting racial/ethnic identity) and the noun 'woman', so a B1 learner who knows both words can derive the intended meaning. While 'black' can also denote clothing color in some contexts, capitalization and contextual cues typically disambiguate this, and the adjective+noun pattern for describing ethnicity is cross-linguistically common, supporting full transparency.

Etymology

Black woman combines Black, a word people use for darker skin and a shared African background, and woman, which means an adult female. So Black woman means 'a woman who is Black, especially of African descent'.