octoroon
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˌɑk təˈrun/
- Slur
- An octoroon was often regarded as someone with one-eighth Black ancestry during the 19th century.
- octoroons and quadroons
Examples
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After a careful study of Motley's work, Harris wrote, "In his early portraits, Motley painted at least four octoroons, a quadroon, and two mulattoes."
Academic text (2015) -
Uh, an octoroon, for example, is a person whose blood is 1/8 African-American.
-
Unless, of course, you meant that Maude was an octoroon, Mama?
Fiction book (1993) -
You would find white women sometimes passing themselves off as octoroons, as women of color.
Academic text (2002) -
Octoroons, or women who were supposedly one-eighth black, were very popular.
Academic text (2002) -
The mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons are gone.
Academic text (2002) -
Presently, a young octoroon girl, who had acquired some reputation among her people as a concert singer, was called upon by the presiding officer to render a contribution to the program.
Fiction book (2000) -
And indeed, so directed, the census did have categories for quadroons and octoroons in the 1890 census, however useless the results.
Academic text (2002) -
Mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons.
-
In the historical context of the United States, an octoroon may have faced different societal challenges compared to those of other racial classifications.
Surface Forms
Morphology
octoroon = octo + roon
Although 'octo-' suggests 'eight', the element '-roon' is not a productive English morpheme and the term is an archaic, specialized racial classification, so an average learner cannot reliably derive its meaning from the parts.
Etymology
Octoroon is an offensive, old word. It comes from the prefix octo- meaning 'eight', the same root you see in octagon, and it was used to name a person with 'one-eighth' Black ancestry, so the origin explains the fraction the term referred to.