lose caste

present singular third person loses caste · participle present losing caste · participle past lost caste · past lost caste

1. South AsiaTo lose one's status as a member of one's caste of birth.

   An uncle of mine in Delhi thinks that I have become polluted, that I have lost caste by working with leather.

   1993, Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy, London: QPD, Chapter 9.11, p. 577

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   1808, “Moral Character of the Hindoos, in Their Interior Department” in The Literary Panorama, London: C. Taylor, Volume 3, p. 141, Attachment to a master, a family, or a government of a different religion, is that which cannot be produced in the mind of a Hindoo, while under the power of his Gooroo or his Depta. But if they lose caste, and embrace Christianity, not by force, but from pure conviction, they become other men.

   1857, D. Urquhart, The Rebellion of India, London: D. Bryce, “Mr. Disraeli’s Speech Reviewed,” p. 14, I would now ask what results could follow from enforcing on the Indian army the biting of a substance [i.e. cow grease on gunpowder cartridges] which they could not place between their lips without losing caste, and becoming objects of abhorrence to their co-religionaries, their friends and their families […]

2. To fall in social standing; to suffer a loss of status or reputation.

   […] I don’t know but that an instructor may lose caste by eating among a miscellany of undergraduates.

   1919, Henry B[lake] Fuller, “Cope Dines—and Tells About It”, in Bertram Cope’s Year: A Novel, Chicago, Ill.: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, The Alderbrink Press, →OCLC, page 57

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   He was degraded in their eyes; he had lost caste and station before the very paupers; he had fallen from all the height and pomp of beadleship to the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.

   1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “In Which the Reader, if He or She Resort to the Fifth Chapter of This Second Book Will Perceive a Contrast Not Uncommon in Matrimonial Cases”, in Oliver Twist; […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 297

   Why, with others present, it would be worse than if I had accused him of raping an old woman […] Bledsoe would disintegrate, disinflate! With a profound sigh he’d drop his head in shame. He’d lose caste. The weekly newspapers would attack him. […] His rivals would denounce him as a bad example for the youth.

   1952, Ralph Ellison, chapter 13, in Invisible Man, New York: Vintage, published 1972, page 259