Word.ws English Dictionary

half-breed

half-breed noun: a person of mixed racial parentage or ancestry, especially one of mixed white and American Indian parentage (metis, métis, Metis, Métis; mestizo).

Noun (1)

half-breed (plural half-breeds)

  1. (dated, derogatory, ethnic, offensive, slur) A person of mixed racial parentage or ancestry, especially one of mixed white and American Indian parentage (metis, métis, Metis, Métis; mestizo).
    • Except for a few half-breeds in the town, there are no native Christians in the island of Timor.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 307
    • It was at Para also that we engaged Gomez and Manuel, two half-breeds from up the river, just come down with a cargo of redwood.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC
  2. A hybrid animal or plant.

Adjective

half-breed

  1. (dated, derogatory, offensive) having dual heritage; having mixed racial parentage or ancestry
  2. Hybridized; having one purebred parent; descended from parents of different breeds or with different traits

Noun (2) capitalized: Half-Breed

Half-Breed (plural Half-Breeds)

  1. A member of the Half-Breeds, a former Republican political party during the Gilded Age.

half-breed meaning in Tamil and Kannada

half-breed in Tamil

கலப்பினப் பிள்ளை

half-breed in Kannada

ಬೆರಕೆ, ಮಿಶ್ರಕುಲದವನು

Synonyms of half-breed

Forms of half-breed

pluralhalf-breeds
alternative formhalfbreed
pluralHalf-Breeds

Origin of half-breed

From half- + breed.

From half-breed, half- + breed.

Questions about half-breed

What does half-breed mean?
Half-breed means a person of mixed racial parentage or ancestry, especially one of mixed white and American Indian parentage (metis, métis, Metis, Métis; mestizo).
What is half-breed in Tamil?
Half-breed in Tamil is கலப்பினப் பிள்ளை. See Half-breed meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is half-breed?
Half-breed can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of half-breed?
The plural of half-breed is half-breeds.

Words near half-breed in the dictionary

  1. half-brained
  2. half-break
  3. half-breaks
  4. half-bred
  5. half-breds
  6. half-breed
  7. half-breeds
  8. half-brethren
  9. half-broken
  10. half-brother
  11. half-brothers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: half-breed (page history and authors); Half-Breed (page history and authors); half-breed (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); half-breed (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-half-breed.wav.

Cite this entry: “half-breed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/half-breed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.