CASTE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does caste mean? 

• CASTE (noun)
  The noun CASTE has 4 senses:

1. social status or position conferred by a system based on class

2. (Hinduism) a hereditary social class among Hindus; stratified according to ritual purity

3. a social class separated from others by distinctions of hereditary rank or profession or wealth

4. in some social insects (such as ants) a physically distinct individual or group of individuals specialized to perform certain functions in the colony

  Familiarity information: CASTE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CASTE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Social status or position conferred by a system based on class

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Context example:

lose caste by doing work beneath one's station

Hypernyms ("caste" is a kind of...):

position; status (the relative position or standing of things or especially persons in a society)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(Hinduism) a hereditary social class among Hindus; stratified according to ritual purity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("caste" is a kind of...):

class; social class; socio-economic class; stratum (people having the same social, economic, or educational status)

Domain category:

Hindooism; Hinduism (a body of religious and philosophical beliefs and cultural practices native to India and based on a caste system; it is characterized by a belief in reincarnation, by a belief in a supreme being of many forms and natures, by the view that opposing theories are aspects of one eternal truth, and by a desire for liberation from earthly evils)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "caste"):

jati ((Hinduism) a Hindu caste or distinctive social group of which there are thousands throughout India; a special characteristic is often the exclusive occupation of its male members (such as barber or potter))

Sense 3

Meaning:

A social class separated from others by distinctions of hereditary rank or profession or wealth

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("caste" is a kind of...):

class; social class; socio-economic class; stratum (people having the same social, economic, or educational status)

Sense 4

Meaning:

In some social insects (such as ants) a physically distinct individual or group of individuals specialized to perform certain functions in the colony

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("caste" is a kind of...):

animal group (a group of animals)

Domain category:

bugology; entomology (the branch of zoology that studies insects)

Holonyms ("caste" is a part of...):

colony (a group of organisms of the same type living or growing together)

 Context examples 

He was, after all, a mere workingman, a member of her own class and caste.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Remember that she comes of a caste who do not lightly show emotion.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The team also conducted computer simulations of the mandible snaps of different castes of Dracula ants to test how the shape and structural characteristics of the mandibles affected the power of their snap.

(Dracula Ant Found to Be Fastest Creature on Earth, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

He is not of your order: keep to your caste, and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

This last came to him as a surprise; it was tremendously indicative of the highness of their caste, of the enormous distance that stretched between her and him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The thought of Mrs. O'Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam, destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean—wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Her training warned her of peril and of wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring; while her instincts rang clarion-voiced through her being, impelling her to hurdle caste and place and gain to this traveller from another world, to this uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a line of raw red caused by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, all too evidently, was soiled and tainted by ungracious existence.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)