of color
of color adjective: nonwhite; of a race other than white, for example black.
Adjective
of color (not comparable)
- Nonwhite; of a race other than white, for example black.
- It is to him that we owe the story that Talleyrand outraged the susceptibilities of the Philadelphians by his open admiration for a woman of colour with whom he frequently appeared in public.1932, Duff Cooper, Talleyrand, Folio Society, published 2010, page 54
- But the vengeance I told myself I was getting for Wrex felt like a lie. I could win the game but he wasn't coming back. Being forced to lose my in-game comrade-who I thought of as a virtual person of color and as a brother-in-arms-affected me in a forceful way that I never expected. Mass Effect...2010 February 18, Evan Narcisse, “Wrex in Effect, or, Deep Space and the Negro/Injun/Krogan Problem”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 02 Sep 2013, Culture
- Belonging to a category of people with mixed black and white ancestry in the Americas in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
- [page 1:] Chap. 1. … The inhabitants of the French part of St. Domingo, as of all the West Indian Islands, were composed of three great classes: 1st, Pure whites. 2d, People of colour, and blacks of free condition. 3d, Negroes in a state of slavery. The reader is apprised that the class which, by a...1801 (edition; original c. 1793), Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British West Indies
- Those who owned the smaller plots were mainly poor whites, free people of color, and free blacks, none of whom had been affected by emancipation.1995, Kathleen Mary Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica & Barbados, 1823-1843
of color meaning in Hindi, Bengali, Assamese and Vietnamese
of color in Hindi
- of color
- अश्वेत aśvet
of color in Bengali
- of color
- অশ্বেত ośśet
of color in Assamese
- of color
- অশ্বেত osset
of color in Vietnamese
- of a race other than white
- da màu
Examples of of color in a sentence
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:of color.
- Being forced to lose my in-game comrade-who I thought of as a virtual person of color and as a brother-in-arms-affected me in a forceful way that I never expected.2010 February 18, Evan Narcisse, “Wrex in Effect, or, Deep Space and the Negro/Injun/Krogan Problem”, in The Atlantic, archived from the...
Forms of of color
| alternative Commonwealth Ireland | of colour |
|---|
Origin of of color
Attested since the late 18th century, initially in reference to a category of mixed-race (partially black, partially white) people in the Americas; compare French de couleur (attested since at least 1779 in gens de couleur), Spanish de color. The phrase continued in occasional use throughout the 1800s and 1900s and was used by e.g. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, around which time its modern meaning began to take shape. Its use by black activists picked up from the 1970s (e.g. black women who used "women of color" at the National Women's Conference in 1977) onward, reaching wide circulation by the 1990s.
Words formed from of color
Questions about of color
- What does of color mean?
- Of color means nonwhite; of a race other than white, for example black.
- What is of color in Hindi?
- Of color in Hindi is अश्वेत (aśvet). See Of color meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use of color in a sentence?
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:of color.
- What part of speech is of color?
- Of color is an adjective.
Words near of color in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: of color (page history and authors); अश्वेत (Hindi) (page history and authors); অশ্বেত (Bengali) (page history and authors); অশ্বেত (Assamese) (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: “of color.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/of_color. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.