a. and sb. [f. Eur-ope + Asia (in sense A. 1 f. the compound Eurasia) + -AN.]
A. adj.
1. Of or pertaining to Eurasia, i.e., to Europe and Asia considered as forming in reality one continent. Cf. EURASIATIC.
1868. Haydn, Dict. Dates (ed. 13), Eurasian-plain, the great central plain of Europe and Asia.
2. Of mixed European and Asiatic (esp. Indian) parentage. (The earlier designation was EAST INDIAN.)
1844. J. M., Local Sketches (Calcutta), in N. & Q., Ser. vi. XII. 177. The Eurasian Belle.
1858. Calcutta Rev., XXXI. 96. East Indian subscribers to the Fund are a very superior class to the mixed Eurasian population we see around us.
1860. S. Times, 26 Aug., 4/2. The term Eurasian is applied to the offspring of a European father and a Hindoo or Mussulman woman in India.
1870. J. W. Kaye, Sepoy War, II. 291. The families also of European or Eurasian merchants and traders were gathered there [at Cawnpore] in large numbers.
1881. G. Aberigh-Mackay, Tour Sir Ali Baba, 121. The Eurasian girl is often pretty and graceful.
B. sb. ‘A modern name for persons of mixt European and Indian blood’ (Col. Yule). See CHEE-CHEE.
1845. Stocqueler, Handbk. Brit. India (1854), 30. Eurasians, a term invented by the late Marquis of Hastings, conventionally accepted as embracing all the progeny of white fathers and Hindoo or Mahometan mothers.
1869. E. A. Parkes, Pract. Hygiene (ed. 3), 461. Eurasians (that is the mixed race of British, Portuguese, Hindoo, Malay, blood mixed in all degrees).
1880. G. Aberigh-Mackay, Tour Sir Ali Baba, 123. The shovel-hats are surprised that the Eurasian does not become a missionary or a schoolmaster.
