brownface

English

Etymology

From brown + face, based on earlier blackface.

Noun

brownface (uncountable)

  1. A style of theatrical makeup in which a white person colours the face brown in order to represent somebody of another race.
    • 2007 September 2, Terrence Rafferty, “Elmore Leonard’s Men of Few Words, in a Few Words”, in New York Times:
      The problem isn’t so much Lancaster’s unconvincing brownface makeup — though it looks as if it had been applied by the same heavy laborers who blacktopped Laurence Olivier for “Othello” — as it is the extremely un-Leonardian softness of his presence.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.