Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a poor white person or poor white people.
- n. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a white person or white people perceived as being lazy and ignorant.
Wiktionary
WordNet 3.0
- n. (slang) an offensive term for White people who are impoverished
Etymologies
- A shortening, first attested in 1850, of poor white trash, which black slaves in the Southern United States were said to call white individuals who worked in servile positions (for example as butlers). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“And he walked on the caper, white trash chutzpah carrying him through, no one informing the police powers that be that a dead man robbed the Happy Time Liquor Store, drove a stolen La Salle up to the front door of Sergeant Turner “Buzz” Meeks, then shot out his living room wall and escaped on foot.”
“We fancied ourselves “Alpine Bohemians,” and not the white trash we would have appeared to most people.”
“You forget, I know the kind of cur you are - I heard you that day at Greystones, when my husband and his white trash caught you, and you whimpered and grovelled like a whipped nigra wench! ”
“Danny pegged her as bad cop stuff: the Department’s mandatory eighteen-month jail tour would probably send her off the deep end and into the arms of the first male cop who promised to take her away from dyke matrons, Mex gang putas and white trash mothers in for child abuse.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘white trash’.
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Take five
Two-word phrases composed of five-letter words. There are a couple with three words (great white shark), but I stuck those on Triads 3.
belly laugh, bench press, bette davis, black angus, blank check, booby hatch, brain coral, bronx cheer, brown dwarf, buddy holly, burnt umber, cabin fever and 195 more...
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Contemporary character classes?
as a youth I, and some others, made a pen-and-paper RPG, based in contemporary crime and suspense fiction + nonfiction, set in America's blighted urban centers, anonymous slurbs, and godforsaken hi...
acrobat, actor, artist, anarchist, bagman, arsonist, yuppie, yakuza underling, yakuza oyabun, yakuza lieutenant, writer, white trash and 192 more...
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white phrase/words
how white is used
white acajou, white-aproned, white fir, white-armed, white-back, white-arsed, white elm, white-ash breeze, white admiral, white-fly, white ale, white ash and 591 more...
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Favorites
machiavellian, mercurial, deus ex machina, synecdoche, litotes, phallic, freudian, metonymy, chrestomathy, falsifiable, gestalt, truthiness and 211 more...
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chromatic phrases
blue movie, brown study, purple prose, rosy scenario, golden mean, eminence grise, white nights, bronze age, silver bullet, orange juice, black death, technicolor yawn and 188 more...
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words I have an irrational and burnin...
celesbian, crouch, perez hilton, slop, lotus boob, anal fissure, eat out, crotch, sewage, backwash, vomit, pus and 100 more...
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Verbal palette?
Words I like to use or would like to use in the near future. Totally random.
convalescence, bellibone, persnickety, contiguous, pabulum, dummary, preliminary, pristine, funny fuse, dolt, shitless, nebulous and 50 more...
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English Two – Summer 2009: Weekly Words
Words that were posted on our English Two blog.
The semester and the course are over now, so this list can be considered finalized.salient, ersatz, purloin, trollop, blitz, dwelling, ample, to get the ax, draconian, madeupical, eerie, gunslinger and 58 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for white trash.
lea Infectious word like swine flu. My friend is a cultural antropologist/librarian, Native Americans being her main subject and she loves this word. I have grown to love it, too, I noticed. White trash has left the building on Capitol Hill... Woohoo! Life is good. May 2, 2009