Also † white-man, whiteman.
† 1. A man clothed in white: cf. WHITE a. 6. In quot. 1691, a surpliced chorister. Obs. rare.
1691. [see WHITE BOY 2].
1693. D’Emilianne’s Hist. Monast. Orders, xix. 216. Of the Order of the White Men. In the year 1399,… a certain Priest, came down from the Alpes into Italy,… Cloathed all in White,… great crouds both of Men and Women … followed him, and took White Cloaths likewise on their Backs.
2. A man belonging to a race having naturally light-colored skin or complexion: chiefly applied to those of European extraction: see WHITE a. 4.
1695. Motteux, trans. St.-Olon’s Morocco, 12. [The Moors of Tetuan] are White-men, pretty well Civiliz’d.
1791. W. Bartram, Carolina, 96. The centinels … perceiving that I was a whiteman, ventured to hail me.
1835. C. E. Hoffman, Winter in West, I. 164. We white men have been spoiled by education; we have been taught to think many things necessary that you red men can do well without.
1904. Hazzledine (title), The White Man in Nigeria.
b. orig. U.S. slang. A man of honorable character such as one associates with a European (as distinguished from a negro): see WHITE a. 4 b.
1883. W. D. Howells, in Century Mag., XXVI. 913/1. You’ve behaved to me like a white man from the start.
1887. Pall Mall Gaz., 22 June, 5/1. Tricoupis the President is a white man—an extremely white man.
