Miscegenation
Pronunciation
- IPA: /mɪˌsɛdʒ.əˈneɪ.ʃən/Rhymes: -eɪʃən
Origin
From Latin misceÅ ("mix") + genus ("race").
Reportedly coined in an anonymous propaganda pamphlet printed in New York City in December 1863, entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro.
Replaced previous amalgamation, from metallurgy. See Miscegenation#Etymological_history.
Full definition of miscegenation
Noun
miscegenation
(uncountable)- (chiefly US) The mixing or blending of race in marriage or breeding, interracial marriage.
- (figuratively) A mixing or blending, especially one which is considered to be inappropriate.
- 1991, Frederick Turner, Rebirth of Value: Meditations on Beauty, Ecology, Religion, and Education, as is clear in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, it has a horror of any spiritual miscegenation between the human and the natural.
- 1981, Dale Maurice Riepe, Asian Philosophy Today, ... if a miscegenation of Latin and Sanskrit may be permitted.
- 2001, Ken Hirschkop, David Shepherd, Bakhtin and Cultural Theory, ...'true English' before it was bastardised in its miscegenation with the Norman French.
Usage notes
Often considered offensive, pejorative, or old-fashioned, alternative terms are more common in contemporary use, such as interracial, interethnic or cross-cultural for relationships, and mixed-race, multiracial, or mixed for persons.
In scholarly use, miscegenation is particularly used for historical discussions, and in current use has been repurposed by academics to analyze the emotions, reactions, and anxieties held by people about interracial couplings.