mameluco
mameluco noun: a child born of one white parent and one Brazilian Indian parent.
Noun
mameluco (plural mamelucos)
- A child born of one white parent and one Brazilian Indian parent.
- The reverse is the case in South America, where the mixture of the Portuguese or Brazilian with the Indian produces the "Mameluco," who is not unfrequently lighter than either parent, and always lighter than the Indian.1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 50
- The Tupi, who a few years earlier had flourished along these opulent coasts, had already been driven farther and farther back into the forest, and appeared in the records […] only as occasional domestic slaves and already mainly present as mixed blood mamelucos, the first children of multiracial...2003, Peter Robb, A Death in Brazil, Bloomsbury, published 2005, page 126
Adjective
mameluco (comparative more mameluco, superlative most mameluco)
- Born of a white father and American Indian mother, particularly in South America.
Forms of mameluco
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | mamelucos |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more mameluco |
| superlative | most mameluco |
Origin of mameluco
Borrowed from Brazilian Portuguese mameluco, from Arabic مَمْلُوك (mamlūk, “slave”). Doublet of mameluke.
Questions about mameluco
- What does mameluco mean?
- Mameluco means a child born of one white parent and one Brazilian Indian parent.
- What part of speech is mameluco?
- Mameluco can be a noun or an adjective.
- What is the plural of mameluco?
- The plural of mameluco is mamelucos.
Words near mameluco in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mameluco (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “mameluco.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mameluco. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.