Word.ws English Dictionary

lightie

lightie noun: a black person with relatively light-coloured skin. Also the alternative form of lighty.

Noun

lightie (plural lighties)

  1. (informal) A black person with relatively light-coloured skin.
    • I looked up into that giant's eyes and while I saw curiosity there, I didn't see the anger and hatred I had seen in so many eyes of the black people as they looked down on a lightie.2016, Rick Johnson, Heirloom Plantation, page 52
    • […] hood-famous Black men and members of their entourages, surrounded by a uniform of attractive young white women and the occasional ambiguous 'lightie.'2019, Derek Owusu, Safe: 20 Ways to be a Black Man in Britain Today

Also used as

lightie is also the alternative form of lighty.

Forms of lightie

plurallighties

Origin of lightie

From light + -ie.

Questions about lightie

What does lightie mean?
Lightie means a black person with relatively light-coloured skin.
What part of speech is lightie?
Lightie is a noun.
What is the plural of lightie?
The plural of lightie is lighties.

Words near lightie in the dictionary

  1. lighthousekeepers
  2. lighthouselike
  3. lighthouseman
  4. lighthousemen
  5. lighthouses
  6. lightie
  7. lighties
  8. lightin'
  9. lighting
  10. lighting a fire under
  11. lighting along

Source and license

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