paleface

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See also: Paleface and pale face

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From pale +‎ face, a supposed calque from a Native American language. First appearing in print in the early 19th century.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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paleface (plural palefaces)

  1. (ethnic slur) A white person, a person of European descent, particularly in Native American contexts.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:white person
    • 1848, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter XXVIII, in The Bee-Hunter, or, The Oak Openings:
      Dere is Great Wicked Spirit, too... Heart grow hard. Great pleasure was to kill pale-face. Dat feeling last, Blossom, till I see you. Feel like fader to you, and don't want your scalp... Still want all udder pale-face scalp. Want Bourdon scalp much as any.
    • 1889, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Sketches from Memory”, in The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains‎[1]:
      The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions of the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of the haunted region.
    • 1905, Edward S. Ellis, Deerfoot in The Mountains‎[2]:
      The dusky hunters "guyed" the palefaces who could not do as well as they with their primitive weapons, even though the fire spouted from the iron tubes and the balls that could not be seen by the eye carried death farther than did the missiles launched by the natives.
    • 1908, Zane Grey, The Last of the Plainsmen‎[3]:
      "Yes me big paleface—me come long way toward setting sun—go cross Big Water—go Buckskin—Siwash—chase cougar." The cougar, or mountain lion, is a Navajo god and the Navajos hold him in as much fear and reverence as do the Great Slave Indians the musk-ox.
    • 1909, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “He Also Serves”, in Options‎[4]:
      High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since we landed in Boca. You know how an Indian is—the palefaces fixed his clock when they introduced him to firewater.
    • 1916 March 11, “Silly Place-Names”, in Saturday Evening Post‎[5]:
      Some Blackfeet Indians, with a taste and a respect for Nature that shames the paleface, have protested to the Secretary of the Interior […]
    • 1998, Jim Goad, The Redneck Manifesto, page 128:
      Speed is whitey's drug, from the palefaces who cook it to the Caspers who deal it to the ofay vanilla wafers who snort or spike it.

Usage notes

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As with whiteface, particularly in written sources, paleface is less often used directly and more typically reported secondhand or used in fictional speech as a linguistic marker for less educated Native Americans or used ironically to acknowledge traditional American prejudice against them.

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Translations

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