Word.ws English Dictionary

blood quantum

blood quantum noun: the fraction of a person's ancestors, out of their total ancestors, who are documented as full-blooded Native Americans.

Noun

blood quantum (plural blood quantums or blood quanta)

  1. (US, offensive, proscribed, sometimes) The fraction of a person's ancestors, out of their total ancestors, who are documented as full-blooded Native Americans.
    • Native blood quantum was introduced in 1705 at the Virginia Colony. If you were at least half Native, you didn’t have the same rights as white people. Blood quantum and tribal membership qualifications have since been turned over to individual tribes to decide.2018, Tommy Orange, There There, Harvill Secker, page 137

Forms of blood quantum

pluralblood quantums
pluralblood quanta

Questions about blood quantum

What does blood quantum mean?
Blood quantum means the fraction of a person's ancestors, out of their total ancestors, who are documented as full-blooded Native Americans.
What part of speech is blood quantum?
Blood quantum is a noun.
What is the plural of blood quantum?
The plural of blood quantum is blood quantums.

Words near blood quantum in the dictionary

  1. blood pressure
  2. blood pressures
  3. blood pudding
  4. blood puddings
  5. blood quanta
  6. blood quantum
  7. blood quantums
  8. blood rain
  9. blood rains
  10. blood red
  11. blood reds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blood quantum (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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