mulatto
pronunciation
How to pronounce mulatto in British English:
UK [mjuˈlætəʊ]
How to pronounce mulatto in American English:
US [mjuˈlætoʊ]
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- Noun:
- an offspring of a Black and a White parent
Word Origin
- mulatto (n.)
- 1590s, "offspring of a European and a black African," from Spanish or Portuguese mulato "of mixed breed," literally "young mule," from mulo "mule," from Latin mulus (fem. mula) "mule" (see mule (n.1)); possibly in reference to hybrid origin of mules. As an adjective from 1670s. Fem. mulatta is attested from 1620s; mulattress from 1805. American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless of all the hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise, incontestibly mulatto. Indeed, for all their traditional antagonisms and obvious differences, the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other. [Albert Murray, "The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture," 1970] Old English had sunderboren "born of disparate parents."
Example
- 1. Some dominicans ( who are mainly mulatto ) have a racist attitude to mainly black haitians .
- 2. She 's the mulatto woman who was standing in here a while ago with her apron to her eyes .
- 3. The child is listed in this 1870 census as a " mulatto " , the term used to describe a person of mixed race .
- 4. Near the door stood a mulatto woman evidently a servant in the house with a timid bearing and an emaciated face pitifully sad and gentle .
- 5. Her greatest hope was to be allowed to play julie , a mulatto , in " show boat " .