CASTE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Caste

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/kæst/ Listen

noun

Caste n.

One of the hereditary classes into which the Hindu are divided according to the laws of Brahmanism. Note: The members of the same caste are theoretically of equal rank, and same profession or occupation, and may not eat or intermarry with those not of their own caste. The original are four, viz., the Brahmans, or sacerdotal order; the Kshatriyas, or soldiers and rulers; the Vaisyas, or husbandmen and merchants; and the Sudras, or laborers and mechanics. Men of no caste are Pariahs, outcasts. Numerous mixed classes, or castes, have sprung up in the progress of time.

A separate and fixed order or class of persons in society who chiefly hold intercourse among themselves. "The tinkers then formed an hereditary caste."

To lose caste, to be degraded from the caste to which one has belonged; to lose social position or consideration.

See images of 'Caste'

Etymology of 'Caste'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Caste" Quotes from Famous Books

... much alacrity as he could command and went across to Farr. Sober, the nephew of Colonel Dodd had treated this person with rather lofty contempt; drunk, he was not so finical in matters of caste—and, besides, this man now wore the garb of a gentleman, and young Mr. Dodd always placed much ...

— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... rainbow, and the peerdom those benches and cross-benches, red as massacre and the Scarlet Woman, where thronged 580, while to Charing Cross spread the crowd without. He, from the Throne, addressed them, and they, startled by the revelation of a caste chaster far than Vere de Vere, and a pride far more serenely throned than Hohenzollern, acknowledged him high-born..."Your lordships will not fail to perceive my will to invigorate some of our ancient epithets: thus, the First Estate ...

— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... youth straight in the eyes. She was fighting for her own. She could not bear to think of parting with this home where she had lived so happily with her husband, and where her two children were born and reared. Even though Peg was not of the same caste, much could be done with her. Once accept her into the family and the rest ...

— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... the Times, to whom you allude, if he had not confined himself while in Damascus to Frank society, and that, too, of a particular caste, would have seen and heard enough to make him hesitate before he declared his belief in the guilt of the Jews, the mildness of their sufferings, and the mercy of their persecutors! Had he gone to the house of ...

— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... defending the social and political traditions of the Roman aristocracy and the time-honored principles of Romanism against the influx of those new forces of a later age which were seeking to orientalize the ancient Latin republic. She died for her family, for her caste, and for Rome, without even having the reward of being remembered with dutiful regard by posterity; for in this struggle she had sacrificed not merely her life, but even her honor and her fame. Such, furthermore, was the common destiny of ...

— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

More quotes...