quadroon

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Related to quadroons: Octoroon

quad·roon

(kwŏ-dro͞on′)

A person having white ancestors except for one black grandparent. Used especially as a classification under certain European colonial legal systems and now considered offensive.

[Alteration of Spanish cuarterón, from cuarto, quarter, from Latin quārtus; see k^wetwer- in Indo-European roots.]

quadroon

(kwɒˈdruːn)

(Peoples) old-fashioned offensive the offspring of a Mulatto and a White person; a person who is one-quarter Black

[C18: from Spanish cuarterón, from cuarto quarter, from Latin quartus]

quad•roon

(kwɒˈdrun)

n.

a person having one-fourth black ancestry; the offspring of a mulatto and a white.

[1640–50; alter. of Sp cuarterón, derivative of cuarto fourth< Latin quārtus; see -oon]

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Noun

quadroon - an offspring of a mulatto and a white parent; a person who is one-quarter black

archaicism, archaism - the use of an archaic expression

mixed-blood - a person whose ancestors belonged to two or more races

Translations

sangue misto

quadroon

[kwɒˈdruːn] N → cuarterón m

quadroon

n → Viertelschwarze(r) mf, → Viertelneger(in) m(f) (neg!), → Terzerone m (spec), → Terzeronin f (spec)

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References in classic literature ?

A quadroon nurse followed them about with a faraway, meditative air.

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There were slow boys and bashful boys, feeble boys and riotous boys, boys that lisped and boys that stuttered, one or two lame ones, and a merry little quadroon, who could not be taken in elsewhere, but who was welcome to the `Bhaer-garten', though some people predicted that his admission would ruin the school.

March couldn't get over her surprise, and insisted on shaking hands with every one of the featherless birds, from tall Franz and Emil to the little quadroon, who had the sweetest voice of all.

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Here the door opened, and a small quadroon boy, between four and five years of age, entered the room.

At this moment, the door was pushed gently open, and a young quadroon woman, apparently about twenty-five, entered the room.

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Quadroon, with carte blanche on the Slave question); indeed the family estate was much embarrassed, and the income drawn from the borough was of great use to the house of Queen's Crawley.

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The ledger, compiled by Carleton's staff from the spring to the fall of 1783, reveals the racism of the day, referring to Black Loyalists as rascals, quadroons, mulattos, mustees and wenches.

Carleton's Book of Negroes: a ledger's legacy

Informed by eugenics, the Australian Census from 1911 until 1966 classified Aboriginal people by supposed blood quantum--full-blood, half-caste, quadroons and octaroons (Rowse 2006:6).

It all comes down to ticking a box: collecting Aboriginal identification in a 30-year longitudinal health study

17) See Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Quadroon Girl" (1842); Lydia Maria Child's short stories "The Quadroons" (1842) and "Slavery's Pleasant Homes" (1843); Thomas Mayne Reid's novel The Quadroon (1856); and Dion Boucicault's play The Octoroon (1859).

Mapping the terrain of black writing during the early New Negro era

Clark argues convincingly that although the city had been part of the United States since 1803, "the lurid mythology of its quadroons begged the question as to whether it properly belonged" (161).

The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World

Men, women, children, Northerners, Southerners, slaves, slave owners, bounty catchers, legislators, farmers--married and unmarried, deeply religious and lacking faith, and of various ethnic parentage (mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons)--all leap into the narrative, shedding light on the evils wrought by slavery.

The summer of Uncle Tom

Mulattoes and Quadroons are almost as liable to them in Yellow Fever as white people, and quite a number have died of hemorrhages this year.