royal

royal
 adj.— «In Westmoreland where I was born, the word “royal” was used to describe mixed-race people, equating the African heritage with royalty. Thus there were Indian-Royals and Chinese-Royals. Though I didn’t hear anyone being referred to as White-Royal, a brown person’s wavy hair was described as “royal hair.”…If “royal” was synonymous to “African”, it is no wonder then that previous generations carried themselves with so much dignity.» —“Growing up as royalty” by Jean Lowrie-Chin Jamaica Observer Feb. 28, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Join the discussion

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

Blessing Box (episode #1613)

Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...