Word.ws English Dictionary

high yellow

high yellow noun: a black person with light skin with yellow undertones.

Noun

high yellow (plural high yellows)

  1. (sometimes racially offensive) A black person with light skin with yellow undertones.
    • Being a light-skinned girl, you get called names. You get called 'lite-brite', you get called 'high yellow', 'redbone'.2014 January 10, Colorism: The Secret Shame (Oprah's Lifeclass), season 5, episode 2, via OWN
    Synonyms:
    high yaller

Adjective

high yellow (comparative more high yellow, superlative most high yellow)

  1. Of a black person, having a light skin tone.
    • Now, you gonna get your little narrow, high yellow ass back into the theater and enjoy Soul Plane 2.2007 October 8, 12:23 from the start, in ...Or Die Trying (The Boondocks), season 2, episode 1, spoken by Granddad (John Witherspoon)

Synonyms of high yellow

Forms of high yellow

Noun
pluralhigh yellows
Adjective
comparativemore high yellow
superlativemost high yellow

Origin of high yellow

After the golden-yellow skin tone of some multiracial people. "High" is usually considered a reference to a social class system in which skin color (and associated ancestries) is a major factor, placing those of lighter skin (with more white ancestry) at the top and those of darker skin at the bottom.

Questions about high yellow

What does high yellow mean?
High yellow means a black person with light skin with yellow undertones.
What part of speech is high yellow?
High yellow can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of high yellow?
The plural of high yellow is high yellows.

Words near high yellow in the dictionary

  1. high wire
  2. high wires
  3. High Wycombe
  4. high yaller
  5. high yallers
  6. high yellow
  7. high yellows
  8. high yo-yo
  9. high yo-yos
  10. high-accuracy
  11. high-backed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: high yellow (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: “high yellow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/high_yellow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.