brass ankle

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English

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Noun

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brass ankle (plural brass ankles)

  1. (Southern US) A person whose racial heritage is regarded as primarily white, but with a small degree of known or suspected non-white ancestry.[1] A manifestation of the American “one-drop rule” of racial categorization.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Parler, Mary Celestia (1930) “Word-list from Wedgefield, South Carolina”, in Dialect Notes, volume , New Haven, Connecticut: The American Dialect Society, →OCLC, Part Ⅱ, 1930, page 78:brass ankle, n. A person who passes for white, but who is suspected of having “a streak down his back”. (q.v.)