Word.ws English Dictionary

annas in the rupee

annas in the rupee noun: used with a number to indicate the degree of an individual's mixed racial descent.

Noun

annas in the rupee pl (plural only)

  1. (British, India, archaic, colloquial, derogatory, offensive) Used with a number to indicate the degree of an individual's mixed racial descent.
    • By the end of the second day he was so dark that he looked to be at least eight annas in the rupee […]1930, The Royal Engineers Journal, volume 44, page 285
    • And in the end, all knew that it was true, Rosalie was only four annas in the rupee.2007, Indu Sundaresan, The Splendor of Silence, page 98

Origin of annas in the rupee

A rupee was worth 16 annas, so eight annas represented a half-and-half mixture, and so on.

Questions about annas in the rupee

What does annas in the rupee mean?
Annas in the rupee means used with a number to indicate the degree of an individual's mixed racial descent.
What part of speech is annas in the rupee?
Annas in the rupee is a noun.

Words near annas in the rupee in the dictionary

  1. annaprasan
  2. annaprashana
  3. Annapurna
  4. Annarbour
  5. annas
  6. annas in the rupee
  7. Annascaul
  8. annat
  9. annate
  10. annates
  11. annats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: annas in the rupee (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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