white belts

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
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
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
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
5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see white, belt.