miscegenation

noun
/mɪˌsɛd͡ʒ.əˈneɪ.ʃən/

Etymology

Blend of Latin miscēre (“mix”) + Latin genus (“race”) + -ation. Coined by American journalist David Goodman Croly in 1864 and first used in an anonymous pamphlet he coauthored, which claimed to be written by a person who believed in the inherent unity of all racial groups, that marriage between blacks and whites would create a better race, and that the American Civil War was a fight for the latter idea. Later, it was exposed that the pretext of the pamphlet was false and that it had actually been written by a group which hoped to inflame anger, particularly against then-US President Abraham Lincoln who was up for reelection. Replaced previous amalgamation, from metallurgy.

Definitions

  1. The mixing or blending of race in marriage or breeding, interracial marriage.

  2. A mixing or blending, especially one which is considered to be inappropriate.

    • as is clear in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, it has a horror of any spiritual miscegenation between the human and the natural.
    • ... if a miscegenation of Latin and Sanskrit may be permitted.
    • ...'true English' before it was bastardised in its miscegenation with the Norman French.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for miscegenation. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA