Definition of blackface
:makeup applied to a performer playing a black person especially in a minstrel show;
also
:a performer wearing such makeup
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From the M-W Editors
Recent Examples of blackface from the Web
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More than once during my tenure at UVA, fraternity members accentuated their Halloween costumes with blackface.
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In blackface as an elderly slave, like something out of a minstrel horror-comedy, Danielle Davis contributes incendiary bits (lifted straight from Boucicault's original) that shock with genuinely arresting postmodern humor.
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Colton was accused of doing blackface not once, but several times.
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Eugene, Nov. 9: Three people were seen wearing blackface on the University of Oregon campus.
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This was the year blackface was really big, in 2013.
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How was a college professor supposed to know that blackface is offensive?
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On her personal Facebook page, Tuennerman posted a photo of herself masked for the Zulu parade, the African-American Mardi Gras parade that has all its riders, black or white, dress in blackface.
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The show is adapted from a movie of the same name that follows the events leading up to a blackface party at a fictional and predominantly white Ivy League university.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'blackface.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
First Known Use of blackface
1847
Learn More about blackface
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See words that rhyme with blackface Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about blackface
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