mixed bloodn.adj.
/ˌmɪks(t) ˈblʌd/, U.S. /ˈmɪks(t) ˈbləd/ A. n.
1. Descent involving two or more different races or ethnic groups. Usually of mixed blood.
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the world > people > ethnicities > division of mankind by physical characteristics > mixed race > [noun]
mongrelism1598
mixture1634
half-breed1775
half-caste1798
mixed blood1817
Eurasianism1833
mongrelity1859
mulism1861
miscegenation1863
miscegenesis1880
miscegeny1887
métissage1891
half-castism1896
1817 S. R. Brown Western Gazetteer 244 About one half of the Cherokee nation are of mixed blood by intermarriages with the white people.
1845 J. H. Ingraham Norman x. 37 ‘Of what nature is your secretary?’ he asked, looking at my father. ‘Of mixed blood.’
1935 J. S. Huxley & A. C. Haddon We Europeans i. 23 If a Scottish or Irish clan is of ‘mixed blood’, what likelihood is there of purity of descent among the millions that make up the population of any great modern nation?
1993 A. May Passionate Pilgrim iv. 81 They passed a law decreeing that women of mixed blood could wear only huipals, Indian dresses.
2. A person of such descent.
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the world > people > ethnicities > division of mankind by physical characteristics > mixed race > [noun] > person
mongrel1542
of (the) half blood1697
half-caste1758
half-breed1760
lip-lap1798
quarter-breed1821
half-blood1826
half-and-half1827
quarter-blood1827
quarter-caste1859
mixed blooda1862
brown1862
miscegen1864
yellowbelly1867
breed1870
redbone1890
miscegenate1898
high yellow1910
samba1958
lightie1991
a1862 H. D. Thoreau Maine Woods (1864) ii. 137 The two mixed bloods..went off up the river.
1949 Oceania (Melbourne) Dec. 104 The local mixed-bloods did not really know till then that she was of aboriginal descent.
1960 Press (Vancouver) Dec. 13 A new and dominant element, the mixed bloods, descended from French and Scottish fathers and Indian mothers.
1973 Guardian 20 June 11/3 Today only 5 per cent of children placed by Harry Holt's [adoption] agency are mixed-bloods.
B. adj. (attributive).
Usually with hyphen. Descended from two or more different races or ethnic groups.
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the world > people > ethnicities > division of mankind by physical characteristics > mixed race > [adjective]
mixed blood1840
miscegenated1864
miscegenic1866
1840 N. Amer. Rev. Jan. 135 No English or white woman was at the fort; but a great number of mixed-blood Indian extraction.
1928 Jrnl. Royal Anthropol. Inst. 58 515 Mixed-blood Indians were authorized by a United States law in 1906 to sell their Government lands.
1958 J. Beckett (title of M.A. thesis, Austral. National Univ.) A study of a mixed blood Aboriginal minority in the pastoral west of New South Wales.
1999 Arlington (Texas) Morning News (Electronic ed.) 6 Aug. Eventually the U.S. government allowed mixed-blood children to come [from Vietnam] to the United States along with their family.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2002; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1817