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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. The interbreeding of different races or of persons of different racial backgrounds.
  2. n. Cohabitation, sexual relations, or marriage involving persons of different races.
  3. n. A mixture or hybridization: "There was musical miscegenation at a time when segregation was the common rule” ( Don McLeese).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Mixture or amalgamation of races: applied especially to sexual union between individuals of the black and white races.

Wiktionary

  1. n. The mixing or blending of race in marriage or breeding, interracial marriage.
  2. n. figuratively A mixing or blending, especially one which is considered to be inappropriate.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A mixing of races; amalgamation, as by intermarriage of black and white.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. reproduction by parents of different races (especially by white and non-white persons)

Etymologies

  1. From Latin misceō ("mix") + genus ("race"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Latin miscēre, to mix; see meik- in Indo-European roots + genus, race; see genə- in Indo-European roots + -ation. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “Beginning in the Reconstruction era, when the term miscegenation first was coined, she traces the creation of a racial hierarchy that bolstered white supremacy and banned the marriage of Whites to Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and American Indians as well as the marriage of Whites to Blacks.”

    Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegination Law and the Making of Race in America

  • “Those are the sort of snots that believe "miscegenation" is Just Plain Bad ... or other such guff.”

    Thoughts on Narnia

  • “What we have with (sub -) cultures that condemn miscegenation is morality being itself unconscionable, the unethical masquerading as the ethical, prejudice wearing a disguise of piety.”

    An Open Letter to John C. Wright

  • “Jefferson's claim of unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence is, to Malcolm, an egregious example of miscegenation, where a Latin word is joined to an Anglo-Saxon prefix.”

    Verbatim: VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIX No 3

  • “It was just 85 years ago, in 1922, in the fascinating case of Rollins v. Alabama, that a black man named Jim Rollins was tried and convicted for "miscegenation" -- the crime of having sex with a white woman.”

    The Wall Street Journal: From the WSJ Opinion Archives

  • “Natural Law" has nothing whatsoever to do with "miscegenation" - it mainly promotes Chopric practices like”

    WordPress.com News

  • “So, if someone insists that miscegenation is a crime against nature so "abhorrent" that we must join the lynch mob, no matter how many stand with him, no matter if we're the only person standing against him, we should nevertheless be ready, willing and able to challenge this self-righteous nonsense, to say, this is not a vice -- because this would be the more ethical response even if societal morés condemn us for refusing to conform.”

    An Open Letter to John C. Wright

  • “The specter of cultural miscegenation is duly exorcized by insisting that this "second race" is really the progeny of an invading "Crescent horde" whose Moslem regions are "to intellect a desert space,/A wild without a fountain or a flower,/Where towers Oppression”

    The Ruins of Empire: Nationalism, Art, and Empire in Hemans's Modern Greece

  • “Some states also passed so-called miscegenation laws banning interracial marriages.”

    The Washington Times stories: Latest Headlines

  • “He's the product of what used to be called miscegenation, a scenario that may still be more terrifying than a teen daughter's pregnancy in many American households.”

    Top Stories - Google News

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Lists

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Comments

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  • chained_bear I'm guessing the negative implication comes from racial biases, though that's a very interesting linguistic point, qroqqa. Aug 8, 2008

  • qroqqa I wonder if the negative implication this word has for some is in part due to misunderstanding it as containing the negative mis-. It doesn't: it's misc- "mix" plus gen- "birth, generation". Aug 8, 2008

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‘miscegenation’ has been looked up 2201 times, loved by 2 people, added to 46 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 18.