"touch of the tar brush" meaning in English

See touch of the tar brush in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-touch of the tar brush.ogg [Australia] Forms: touches of the tar brush [plural]
Etymology: Believed to be of British origin. Head templates: {{en-noun|touches of the tar brush}} touch of the tar brush (plural touches of the tar brush)
  1. (informal) Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance). Tags: informal Synonyms: lick of the tarbrush

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for touch of the tar brush meaning in English (2.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Believed to be of British origin.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "touches of the tar brush",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "touches of the tar brush"
      },
      "expansion": "touch of the tar brush (plural touches of the tar brush)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Multiracial",
          "orig": "en:Multiracial",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1936, Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia, page 30",
          "text": "She was quite young—not more than about twenty-five—and sort of dark and slinky-looking, if you know what I mean. Quite nice-looking in a kind of way, but rather as though she might have what my mother used to call \"a touch of the tar-brush.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance)."
      ],
      "id": "en-touch_of_the_tar_brush-en-noun-AX-IF1rx",
      "links": [
        [
          "African",
          "African"
        ],
        [
          "Asian",
          "Asian"
        ],
        [
          "ancestry",
          "ancestry"
        ],
        [
          "Caucasian",
          "Caucasian"
        ],
        [
          "mixed",
          "mixed"
        ],
        [
          "racial",
          "racial"
        ],
        [
          "heritage",
          "heritage"
        ],
        [
          "Afro-Caribbean",
          "Afro-Caribbean"
        ],
        [
          "South Asian",
          "South Asian"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance)."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "lick of the tarbrush"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-touch of the tar brush.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9f/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "touch of the tar brush"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Believed to be of British origin.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "touches of the tar brush",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "touches of the tar brush"
      },
      "expansion": "touch of the tar brush (plural touches of the tar brush)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Multiracial"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1936, Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia, page 30",
          "text": "She was quite young—not more than about twenty-five—and sort of dark and slinky-looking, if you know what I mean. Quite nice-looking in a kind of way, but rather as though she might have what my mother used to call \"a touch of the tar-brush.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance)."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "African",
          "African"
        ],
        [
          "Asian",
          "Asian"
        ],
        [
          "ancestry",
          "ancestry"
        ],
        [
          "Caucasian",
          "Caucasian"
        ],
        [
          "mixed",
          "mixed"
        ],
        [
          "racial",
          "racial"
        ],
        [
          "heritage",
          "heritage"
        ],
        [
          "Afro-Caribbean",
          "Afro-Caribbean"
        ],
        [
          "South Asian",
          "South Asian"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) Real or suspected African or Asian distant ancestry in a person of predominantly Caucasian ancestry; mixed racial heritage (e.g. Afro-Caribbean or, to a lesser extent, South Asian in background or appearance)."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "lick of the tarbrush"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-touch of the tar brush.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9f/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/En-au-touch_of_the_tar_brush.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "touch of the tar brush"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.