caste

名词 n.
中文释义
英 /kɑːst/    美 /kæst/

英文释义

名词 n.
  1. Any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian societies or similar found historically in other cultures.
    — Pakistan is a conservative, religious state. The Edhi Foundation is unusual in its ignoring of caste, creed, religion and sect. This strict stance has led to some criticism from religious groups.
  2. A separate and fixed order or class of persons in society who chiefly associate with each other.
    — Ah! Can you give me all I've asked for — not now, nor a few months later, but when you begin to think of what you might have done if you had kept your own appointment and your caste here — when you begin to look upon me as a drag and a burden?
  3. The division of society into castes; the caste system. uncountable
    — It was an evidence of the peculiar nature of caste in country towns[.]
  4. A class of polymorphous eusocial insects of a particular size and function within a colony.
    — In beehives, most bees belong to the worker caste.

词形变化

castes plural

词汇关系

衍生词
anticaste casted casteism casteist castelect casteless castelike caste mark castemate caste-ridden castewise half-caste intercaste intracaste lose caste noncaste outcaste quarter-caste subcaste supercaste

词源

Borrowed from Portuguese or Spanish casta (“lineage, breed, race”), which the OED derives from Portuguese casto (“chaste”), from Latin castus (“chaste"; "chastity”), Coromines (1987) argues instead for a hypothetical Gothic form *𐌺𐌰𐍃𐍄𐍃 (*kasts, “group, collection of animals”), cognate with English cast, from Proto-Germanic *kastuz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ǵ-es-.
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