Word.ws English Dictionary

white belt

white belt noun: the lowest rank; beginner level.

Noun

white belt (countable and uncountable, plural white belts)

  1. (uncountable) The lowest rank; beginner level.
    • A new student is appointed to the tenth kyu (step), or initial white belt stage.1983, Thomas H. Makiyama, Steve Sanders, Keijutsukai Aikido: Japanese Art of Self-defense, page 166
    • A typical school might start beginner students at white belt.2010, Jim Ollhoff, Martial Arts Around the Globe, page 30
  2. (countable) A student at the white belt level.
    • He decided to stay and clean the floor, as he had done when he was a white belt.2006, Richard C. Gould, Red Sun on the Journey, page 23
    • When a karate student is a white belt, the student aspires to be a black belt, the top color of karate belts, someday.2011, Annemarie Algeo, Fat, Fit, and (Almost) Fifty, page 35
  3. (countable) The belt worn by a student of white belt rank as a symbol of rank.
    • For example students holding a white belt who pass the exam for high white, will wear a yellow stripe on their white belt.2008, Master Richard Gordon, The Complete Guide to Tae Kwon Do: Reference Manual, page 3
    • My one hope as I tie this white belt on you, sir, is that one day you do me the honor of tying on your black belt.2017, Master Taekwon Lee, Jeffrey Nodelman, Ara's Rocky Road to White Belt, page 92
  4. A region in which the majority of residents are white.
    • And in this white belt borderland between the black belt South and the free labor North, few whites lamented that the slave drain continued to thin blacks out of their area and to thicken the institution in the most southern South, repeating the turtle-slow erosion of slavery in the most southern...2007, William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, page 16
    • "White prostitutes and gamblers and vicious resorts” come into the “Black Belt,” explained a black minister in Chicago, because “it is black; they operate with more safety than they do in the white belt."2010, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness, page 226
  5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see white, belt.

Examples of white belt in a sentence

  • This mountain you start from white belt and finish at black belt, the path up the mountain will have many twists and turns, and occasionally lead you astray.2013, Aaron Smalley, Developing the Mindset of a Black Belt, page 97:
  • There's a saying my karate buddy used to tell me when talking about white belt (beginner) versus black belt (expert) karate skills.2014, Dave Erickson, JP Grebenc, Superior Texas Hold'em: Evolved Poker Strategy:
  • I started attending on Sundays, and teamed up with Ian and another 'white belt', we got a 'green belt' - Ralph, to show us our first Kata.2012, Tom Hill, Essays for Black Belt: 20 Inspirational Student Stories:

Forms of white belt

pluralwhite belts

Questions about white belt

What does white belt mean?
White belt means the lowest rank; beginner level.
How do you use white belt in a sentence?
This mountain you start from white belt and finish at black belt, the path up the mountain will have many twists and turns, and occasionally lead you astray.
What part of speech is white belt?
White belt is a noun.
What is the plural of white belt?
The plural of white belt is white belts.

Words near white belt in the dictionary

  1. white bear
  2. white bear problem
  3. white bears
  4. white beech
  5. white beeches
  6. white belt
  7. white belts
  8. white birch
  9. white birches
  10. white blood
  11. white blood cell

Source and license

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