half-breed

plural half-breeds · alternative halfbreed

1. datedderogatoryethnicoffensiveslurA person of mixed racial parentage or ancestry, especially one of mixed white and American Indian parentage (metis, métis, Metis, Métis; mestizo).

   Except for a few half-breeds in the town, there are no native Christians in the island of Timor.

   1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 307

   3 more examples

   It was at Para also that we engaged Gomez and Manuel, two half-breeds from up the river, just come down with a cargo of redwood.

   1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

   The half-breeds or Metis along the Saskatchewan River asked that they be given a legal title to the land which they occupied. […] The half-breeds found that constitutional agitation was hopeless and began open hostilities.

   1921, Watson Kirkconnell, “Military Annals of Victoria”, in Victoria County Centennial History, Lindsay, Ontario: Watchman-Warder Press, →OCLC, page 186

   Some oppose A.I.M. leaders as outsiders; some resent the leadership of Mr. Wilson; full‐blooded Indians resent halfbreeds; the have‐nots resent those with relative wealth.

   1973 March 4, John Kifner, “The Ghosts Dance Once Again at Wounded Knee”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

2. A hybrid animal or plant.

alternative halfbreed

1. datedderogatoryoffensivehaving dual heritage; having mixed racial parentage or ancestry
2. Hybridized; having one purebred parent; descended from parents of different breeds or with different traits

plural Half-Breeds

1. A member of the Half-Breeds, a former Republican political party during the Gilded Age.