white man n.
1. (UK/US, also white fellow, ...guy) an honourable person.
[ | ![]() | Wicklow Mountains 35: In Antrim I was a heart of steel, in Clonmel I was a white boy]. |
![]() | Atlantic Monthly Apr. 405/2: After spending the night at a ‘white man’s’ hotel in Buffalo, the next morning found her standing [...] before one of the world’s great wonders [DA]. | |
![]() | Bulletin (Sydney) 11 Sept. 4/4: As thery say in Northern Queensland, the luckyh litrigant is evidently a ‘White man’. | |
![]() | Texas Cow Boy (1950) 61: Charlie, his brother, was a white man. | |
![]() | ‘The Lost Souls’ Hotel’ in Roderick (1972) 157: I’d get some ‘white men’ for trustees. | |
![]() | ‘That Pretty Girl on the Army’ in Roderick (1972) 488: Each believes that the other is the straightest chap that ever lived — ‘a white man!’. | |
![]() | Thirty-Nine Steps (1930) 13: I haven’t the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell you that you’re a white man. | |
![]() | Confessions of a Twentieth Century Hobo 66: That doctor was a real white man. | |
![]() | Human Side of Crook and Convict Life 103: There’s good brassies, an’ bad brassies — mostly bad fer us, but a few of ’em’s white fellers. | |
![]() | Action Stories June [Internet] ‘No kickin’, gougin’, or bitin’ [...] Let it be a white man’s fight.’ And a white man’s fight it was, [...] both of us stripped to the waist, with no weapons but our naked fists. | ‘Sign of the Snake’|
![]() | (con. 1900s) Sporting Times 177: Now, honest injun, — white man to white man — what’s your form at golf? | |
![]() | Harder They Fall (1971) 310: You think you’re the only white man in the outfit? | |
![]() | Amboy Dukes 17: You’re a white guy, Mike. | |
![]() | Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 22: Blanchie, you’re a white man. | |
![]() | (con. 1964–8) Cold Six Thousand 44: There’s boys who say Wayne Junior’s a white man, and there’s boys who say he’s a weak sister. |
2. (W.I.) an albino.
![]() | cited in Dict. Jam. Eng. (1980). |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
work; the matter in hand.
![]() | Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 82: Here is Percy Gorringe all ready and eager to take up the white man’s burden. |
(US) a fair chance.
![]() | Big Bear of Arkansas (1847) 37: To give him a white man’s chance, I proposed alternatives to him. | |
![]() | DA]. | Bricks without Straw 349: It was right and fair to free the niggers and let them have a fair show and a white man’s chance [|
![]() | Maledicta III:2 174: white man’s chance n [DA 1845] Decent chance; allusion to Chinaman’s chance. |
(US black) the relative inability of Caucasians to jump, a term of derision almost exclusively used in a basketball context.
![]() | Maledicta IX 61: white-man’s disease n Relative inability of Caucasians to jump; blacks’ term of derision usually used in a basketball context. |