lose caste

Verb

lose caste (third-person singular simple present loses caste, present participle losing caste, simple past and past participle lost caste)

1. (South-Asia) To lose one's status as a member of one's caste of birth.
   • Attachment to a master, a family, or a government of a different religion, is that which cannot be produced in the mind of a Hindoo, while under the power of his Gooroo or his Depta. But if they lose caste, and embrace Christianity, not by force, but from pure conviction, they become other men.1808, “Moral Character of the Hindoos, in Their Interior Department” in The Literary Panorama, London: C. Taylor, Volume 3, p. 141
   • I would now ask what results could follow from enforcing on the Indian army the biting of a substance [i.e. cow grease on gunpowder cartridges] which they could not place between their lips without losing caste, and becoming objects of abhorrence to their co-religionaries, their friends and their...1857, D. Urquhart, The Rebellion of India, London: D. Bryce, “Mr. Disraeli’s Speech Reviewed,” p. 14
2. To fall in social standing; to suffer a loss of status or reputation.
   • He was degraded in their eyes; he had lost caste and station before the very paupers; he had fallen from all the height and pomp of beadleship to the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], “In Which the Reader, if He or She Resort to the Fifth Chapter of This Second Book Will Perceive a Contrast Not Uncommon in Matrimonial Cases”, in Oliver...
   • […] I don’t know but that an instructor may lose caste by eating among a miscellany of undergraduates.1919, Henry B[lake] Fuller, “Cope Dines—and Tells About It”, in Bertram Cope’s Year: A Novel, Chicago, Ill.: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, The Alderbrink Press, →OCLC, page 57