Crossword clues for quadroon
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Quadroon \Quad*roon"\, n. [F. quarteron, or Sp. cuarteron. See Quarter a fourth part, and cf. Quarteron.] The offspring of a mulatto and a white person; a person quarter-blooded. [Written also quarteron, quarteroon, and quateron.]
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1707, "offspring of a white and a mulatto," from Spanish cuarteron (used chiefly of the offspring of a European and a mestizo), literally "one who has a fourth" (Negro blood), from cuarto "fourth," from Latin quartus (see quart), so called because he or she has one quarter African blood. Altered by influence of words in quadr-. There also was some use in 19c. of quintroon (from Spanish quinteron) "one who is fifth in descent from a Negro; one who has one-sixteenth Negro blood."
Wiktionary
a. (label en dated) Having three-fourths Caucasian descent and one-fourth African descent. n. (label en dated) A person of three-fourths Caucasian descent and one fourth African descent.
Wikipedia
Quadroon, and the associated words quarteron, octoroon and quintroon are terms that, historically, were applied to define the ancestry of people of mixed-race, generally of African and European ancestry in the slave societies of the Americas, but also, within Australia, to those of Aboriginal and European ancestry.
Governments incorporated the terms in law defining rights and restrictions. The use of such terminology is a characteristic of hypodescent, which is the practice within a society of assigning children of mixed unions to the ethnic group which is perceived by the dominant group as being subordinate. The racial designations refer specifically to the number of full-blooded African ancestors or equivalent, emphasizing the quantitative least, with quadroon signifying that a person has one-quarter black ancestry, etc.
Usage examples of "quadroon".
Tyrone Burke stood near a shut door into a farther attic, almost hidden in the shadows of the great beams, his pistol trained on the rest of the occupants of the dim-lit room: Dominique, Rose, the quadroon maid, and Laurene Houx, all gathered around the unconscious Vivienne.
They are gentlemen of colour, Creoles, Quadroons and Mulattos, but Black Jack McGinty is a black Irishman who can outdrink anybody in the room and then outfight them afterwards.
She is a quadroon, as may be seen from her fairer complexion, though her likeness to her mother is quite discernible.
CHAPTER 2 New Orleans--Society-- Creoles and Quadroons Voyage up the Mississippi On first touching the soil of a new land, of a new continent, of a new world, it is impossible not to feel considerable excitement and deep interest in almost every object that meets us.
Every flatboatman who returned to Kentucky was full of tales of the marvellous beauty of the quadroons and octoroons, stories which I had taken with a grain of salt.
It's an interesting thought, though, that within a few short weeks I'd found myself engaged in running niggers _into_ slavery, and running 'em out again, and all the hundreds of black animals on the _Balliol College_, with every reason to resist and mutiny and raise cain, hadn't given a tenth of the trouble I was getting from this single quadroon, who should have been on his knees in gratitude to me and Crixus and the others.
The quadroon sat for hours before Edna's palette, patient as a savage, while the house-maid took charge of the children, and the drawing-room went undusted.