Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Half-caste \Half"-caste`\ (-k[.a]st), n. One born of a European parent on the one side, and of a Hindu or Mohammedan on the other. Also adjective; as, half-caste parents.
Wiktionary
a. Describing someone of mixed racial descent. n. A derogatory name for a person of mixed racial descent
WordNet
n. offspring of parents of different races or cultures
Wikipedia
Half-caste is a term for a category of people of mixed race or ethnicity. It is derived from the term caste, which comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish casta, meaning race. It can sometimes be used in an offensive manner but not universally (particularly in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands and parts of Asia).
The terms half-caste, caste, quarter-caste, "mix-breed" etc. were widely used by ethnographers in British colonies to try to classify natives. In Latin America, the equivalent term for half-castes was Cholo and Zambo.
Half-Caste also called The Real Story of Half-Caste is a 2004 documentary-style horror film written and directed by Sebastian Apodaca. Set in Southern Africa, it centers around a group of documentary makers who search for the Half-Caste, a hybrid creature that is said to be part man and part leopard.
Usage examples of "half-caste".
They were an odd couple, the two of them, and looked shabby, the half-caste, dowdily dressed woman and her tiny daughter, standing nervously in the grand hall with its chandeliers and sweeping staircase and somber portraits of all the Jackson family.
It is most repugnant to have to question this half-caste son of a puta, a street whore, as if he were a legal person, rather than simply hanging him.
Like the huipil blouse and skirt worn by the india and half-caste women, hundreds of male figures in the rough cotton shirt, pants, and woven maguey mantas would throng the plaza.
There are tracks through the endless mallee scrub, only known to the tribes in the neighbourhood, and a few half-castes like Warrigal, that have been stock-riding about them.
For her experience as a servant had begun as a child, she having been stolen from the camp by a pearler needing house-help for his half-caste wife in his Thursday Island home.
The interpreter readily told them that the half-caste had offered him a liberal sum in order to learn what Jack was doing, and what route he intended to follow on leaving Brindisi, but the man declared that he had made no answer, had, indeed, been unable to reply to the questions before Jack was on the scene and making his rush.
When we left Corunna Downs to come to the Swan Native and Half-Caste Mission, we had to travel through Marble Bar and then to Port Hedland.
I rubbed shoulders with priests and nuns, whores and dons, vaqueros and indios, spurred ones and lowly half-castes, rugged soldados and perfumed dandies.
It was only after that the Servian Walls went up, while the Italian peoples of the Padus Valley, all Umbria, and northern Picenum mingled their blood with the Gauls, became despised half-castes.
What with troops in old jackets, which had once been scarlet, Lascars with their curly black hair, and dark handsome features, yellow men, sickly women, and half-caste children, with their Hindoo Ayahs, tigers, lions, turtles, cows, sheep, goats, and pigs, on the booms and main deck, the vessel was in a strange motley of confusion.
The maroons were feared even more than mestizo road agents because they were not only bigger and stronger but had suffered more abuse than half-castes.
When next morning Peace appeared before the magistrate at Greenwich Police Court he was not described by name--he had refused to give any--but as a half-caste about sixty years of age, of repellant aspect.