mestizo

[ me-stee-zoh, mi- ]

noun,plural mes·ti·zos, mes·ti·zoes.
  1. a person of mixed racial or ethnic ancestry, especially, in Latin America, of mixed Indigenous and European descent or, in the Philippines, of mixed Indigenous and foreign descent.: See also mestiza.

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Origin of mestizo

1
First recorded in 1580–90; from Spanish, noun use of adjective mestizo, from Vulgar Latin mixtīcius (unrecorded) “mixed”

Words Nearby mestizo

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use mestizo in a sentence

  • An Indian woman with a mestizo baby in her arms stood in the doorway when the three men reached the hut.

    The Five Arrows | Allan Chase
  • The child, which was evidently dying of anæmia, was a mestizo.

    The Locusts' Years | Mary Helen Fee
  • One was a Spanish mestizo, 66 were Chinese half-castes and 524 were indians.

    The Katipunan | J. Brecknock Watson (AKA Francis St. Clair)
  • We may say, then, that in Palenque every Maya baby below ten months of age was sacral spotted, and that no mestizo baby was.

    In Indian Mexico (1908) | Frederick Starr
  • The mestizo arose to his feet, and addressed himself, not to the emissaries of the Republic, but to his own supporters.

British Dictionary definitions for mestizo

mestizo

/ (mɛˈstiːzəʊ, mɪ-) /


nounplural -zos or -zoes
  1. a person of mixed parentage, esp the offspring of a Spanish American and an American Indian

Origin of mestizo

1
C16: from Spanish, ultimately from Latin miscēre to mix

Derived forms of mestizo

  • mestiza (mɛˈstiːzə), fem n

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