Caucasian

How to spell caucasian

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce caucasian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does caucasian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or denoting people regarded as belonging to the white or pale-skinned division of humankind.
2. nounA person regarded as belonging to the white or pale-skinned division of humankind.

Caucasian in a sentence

• adjective

  The witness described the driver as a caucasian male in his forties.

• noun

  Police said the suspect was a caucasian aged about thirty.

• adjective

  The census form asked respondents to identify as caucasian, Black, Asian, or other.

• noun

  The report listed each victim as either a caucasian or of another background.

Where does caucasian come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Caucasus, the mountain range and region lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, whose name reaches English through Latin Caucasus and ultimately Greek Kaukasos. The racial sense was coined in 1795 by the German anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who classified humankind into groups and chose the Caucasus as the supposed homeland of pale-skinned Europeans, partly because he admired a skull from the region in his collection. He believed, mistakenly, that the people of that area represented an original or ideal human form, and so the label spread into scientific and later everyday English during the nineteenth century. Modern science has long abandoned Blumenbach's racial categories, but the term survives, especially in American legal and demographic usage, as a synonym for 'white'. The spelling trap lives in the opening 'cau' (an 'au' that sounds like 'aw') and the closing '-asian', which mirrors the word 'Asian' and tempts writers to misplace the letters.

How the word is built

• Caucas- (from the Caucasus mountains/region)
• -ian (adjective/noun suffix meaning 'belonging to')