miscegenation

Definition

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

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.

Example Sentences

• "Anissimov took to posting paranoid white supremacist rants on Twitter. Why, he asked, do “blacks get your own continent”? “European whites are being replaced and destroyed by ‘diversity,’” he cried. He denounced miscegenation and declared that women should be confined to the home."
• "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."