black men

Noun

black man (countable and uncountable, plural black men)

1. A male adult member of an ethnic group having dark pigmentation of the skin, typically of sub-Saharan African descent; or the appearance thereof.
   • I saw a black man with a dog and a white man on a bicycle.

   Synonyms:

   BIPOC, BME, colored, colored person, minority, nonwhite, person of color

2. (dated, usually, with-definite-article) Black men or black people collectively; black culture.
   • The state's policy of "separate but equal" was really about keeping the black man down.
3. (archaic) An evil spirit, the bogeyman, a demon.
   • [H]e suspects everything he hears and sees to be a devil, or enchanted, and imagineth a thousand chimeras and visions, which to his thinking he certainly sees, bugbears, talks with black men, ghosts, goblins, etc.1624, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, volume I, New York Review Books, published 2001, page 387
4. (archaic, uncountable) A German-derived game of tag, in which the tagging player is called the "black man".
   • The one known as "black man" was particularly interesting. It was no doubt as ancient as civilization, and was simply a drama without words wherein one of the children assumed the part of the Old Feller and proceeded to harry and capture the other players who must run from one "base" to the next to...1914, James Baldwin, In My Youth: From the Posthumous Papers of Robert Dudley, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, published 1914, page 343
5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see black, man.
   • The white men are always put on that side of the board which commences by row 1, and the black men are placed opposite.1883, Henry Richter, Chess Simplified!, page 4