Word.ws English Dictionary

black-a-moor

black-a-moor is the alternative spelling of blackamoor.

Meaning of blackamoor

Noun

blackamoor (plural blackamoors)

  1. (archaic, offensive) A person with dark black skin, especially one from north Africa.
    • Argent, three blackamoors’ heads couped sable, capped or, fretty gules.
  2. (offensive) A black slave or servant, and hence any slave, servant, inferior, or child.
    • In 1596 Elizabeth I had already decreed that all "blackamoors" should be sent back to Spain or Portugal as they were disturbing local labour markets. It became very fashionable for the wealthy to have "blackamoor" page boys and personal servants, as their complexions set off the pale-skinned beauty...1893, Annotation to The Diary of Samuel Pepys by "Mary", http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1660/08/10/index.php citing Restoration London, Liza Picard, pages 178-179.

See all 3 meanings of blackamoor

Forms of black-a-moor

pluralblack-a-moors

Questions about black-a-moor

What is black-a-moor the alternative spelling of?
Black-a-moor is the alternative spelling of blackamoor.

Words near black-a-moor in the dictionary

  1. black woodpecker
  2. black woodpeckers
  3. Black Zionism
  4. black zone
  5. black zones
  6. black-a-moor
  7. black-a-moors
  8. black-and-blue
  9. black-and-tan
  10. black-and-tans
  11. black-and-white

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black-a-moor (page history and authors); blackamoor (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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Cite this entry: “black-a-moor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black-a-moor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.