Dictionary

octoroon en · NOUN

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish octorón; compare quadroon from cuarterón (“quadroon”).

Meanings

1. (dated, historical) Someone having one-eighth black ancestry.
   • There would have been no legal barrier to their union; there would have been no frightful menace to white supremacy in the marriage of the negro and the octoroon: the drop of dark blood bridged the chasm. 1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars, ch. XVIII:
   • That's Balthios, the octoroon great grandson of Lebron James. He doesn't like to talk about himself, but he's a good guy. 2008, Tales of Game's Studios, quoting Charles Barkley, Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Tales of Game's Studios:
   • Grandmother Baxter was a quadroon or an octoroon, or in any case she was nearly white. 1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 10, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, published 1971, page 50:
   • Yet the least drop of Spanish blood, if it be only of quadroon or octoroon, is sufficient to raise them from the rank of slaves, and entitle them to a suit of clothes—boots, hat, cloak, spurs, long knife, and all complete, though coarse and dirty as may be,—and to call themselves Españolos, and to hold property, if they can get any. 1840, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, ch. XIII:
   • I dare say he has some Italians with him, but our amiable friends are not Italians. They are octoroons and African half-bloods of various shades, but I fear we English think all foreigners are much the same so long as they are dark and dirty. 1914, G. K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown, chapter 9:
   • It was the racist, settler colonialism that created whiteness, that created blackness, half-caste, quarter-caste, octoroon, that saw mixed-race people as a third race. […] Protectors took the mixed-race children, ‘half-castes’, ‘quarter-castes’, ‘octoroons’, from their parents, from their culture, raised the light-skinned ones white, at an orphanage, and trained the darker-skinned ones to be domestic servants for the colonisers. 2021 November 7, Claire [G.] Coleman, “Not quite blak enough: ‘The people who think I am too white to be Aboriginal are all white’”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2021:
2. (dated, historical) Someone having 1/64th black ancestry: the child of a quintoon and a white man.
   • Quintoon: child of mustiphini and white male Unspeakable: child of mustiphini and white woman Octoroon: child of quintoon and white man Unspeakable: child of quintoon and white woman 2005, Donald Harman Akenson, Irish History of Civilization, page 353:

Forms

Coordinates

list in mulatto (person of mixed race)

Relateds

terceroon · quadroon · quintroon

Synonyms

mustee