negro

Adjective (1)

negro (not comparable)

1. (dated, offensive) Relating to a black ethnicity.
   • Recently, on a wintry Sunday, some 2,500 white Chicago area residents embarked on a strange safari across the city, determined to do what most of them had never done before—visit a Negro home. Eager to purge themselves of ignorance about the city's "other half," they were participants in...1963 April, “Anti-bias Coffee Klatsch: Windy City Interfaith Project Fights Bigotry with Coffee, Cookies and Conversation”, in Ebony, volume XVIII, number 6, Chicago, Ill.: Johnson Publishing...
2. (dated, offensive) Black or dark brown in color.

Noun (1)

negro (plural negroes or negros)

1. (dated, offensive) A person of black African ancestry.
   • The negroes believe that its presence has a sanitary effect upon their cattle […]1867, Mayne Reid, Quadrupeds: what they are and where found, page 141
   • What Peter said was true but she hated to hear it from a negro and a family negro, too. Not to stand high in the opinion of one's servants was a humiliating a thing as could happen to a Southerner.1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published June 1944, →OCLC, part IV, page 675
2. (archaic) A slave, especially one of African ancestry.
   • We don't want your Negroes, or your horses, or your lands, or any thing you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and if it involved the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.1864, William Tecumseh Sherman, General William Tecumseh Sherman to the Mayor and Councilmen of Atlanta

Noun (2) capitalized: Negro

UK/ˈniːɡɹəʊ/US/ˈniːɡɹoʊ/

Negro (plural Negroes or Negros)

1. (dated, offensive, usually) Alternative letter-case form of negro.
   • The rickets were sold to sex-starved who had weird ideas about Negro women.1953 August 6, Jet, volume 4, Johnson Publishing Company, →ISSN, pages 21-22
   • Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.1963, Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Adjective (2) capitalized: Negro

UK/ˈniːɡɹəʊ/US/ˈniːɡɹoʊ/

Negro (not comparable)

1. (in-compounds, usually hyphenated) Pertaining to the panethnic or ethnolinguistic groups associated with the proposed Negro-African superphylum.
   • The Negro-African language theory was proposed.

Proper noun capitalized: Negro

UK/ˈniːɡɹəʊ/US/ˈniːɡɹoʊ/

Negro

1. A surname.