quadroon

From Spanish cuarterón (“¾ white, a child of a European and a mestizo”), from cuarto (“one-fourth”) + -on (“-oon: forming related nouns”), from Latin quartus (“one-fourth”). Doublet of cuarteron.

quadroon (plural quadroons)

1. (dated, chiefly historical) A person considered three-fourths white, having one non-white grandparent.
   • 1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 47, in Little Women: […], part second, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC:

     There were slow boys and bashful boys, feeble boys and riotous boys, boys that lisped and boys that stuttered, one or two lame ones, and a merry little quadroon, who could not be taken in elsewhere, but who was welcome to the ‘Bhaer-garten’, though some people predicted that his admission would ruin the school.

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, Chapter V, p. 63; Chapter VIII, p. 120

     Diana was a black quadroon, her father being a blackfellow.
     He was the father of four quadroons who were regarded as half-castes because the lighter part of their mother's blood was Asiatic, and he was only too well aware of what their future would be should he desert them.

In Latin America, originally concerned with people considered one-fourth Native American but, in US contexts, chiefly used with regard to people considered one-fourth black. In Australia, chiefly used for those regarded as one-fourth aboriginal.

• (person of mixed race): See mulatto
• quarter-caste

quadroon (not comparable)

1. (dated, chiefly historical) Of or related to quadroons.
   • 1842, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Quadroon Girl:

     Before them, with her face upraised,
     In timid attitude,
     Like one half curious, half amazed,
     A Quadroon maiden stood.

   • 1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter XVII, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, published 20 March 1852, →OCLC:

     "What need you getting drunk, then, and cutting up, Prue?" said a spruce quadroon chambermaid, dangling, as she spoke, a pair of coral ear-drops.

   • 1892, Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], →OCLC, page 40:

     The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, […]