dead white male

[ ded hwahyt meyl, wahyt ]

noun

, Slang: Disparaging.

1. (sometimes initial capital letters.) one of a group of white male writers, scientists, or other historical figures whose works have traditionally dominated the field or been a disproportionate part of the school curriculum in the West: : DWM

   to expand the literary canon of dead white males to include important works by women.

Word History and Origins

Origin of dead white male¹

First recorded in 1965–70

Example Sentences

The composer Robert Schumann was an inventive and joyous writer, maybe more than any other dead white male composer.

From New York Times

Shakespeare is by far the most famous author to be squeezed through the social justice cheesecloth, as #DisruptTexts also went after F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Golding and other dead White male writers who long dotted high school syllabi.

From Washington Times

Where that will leave the market for dead white male avant-garde artists is anyone’s guess.

From New York Times

But, even though Beauchamp recommends reading outside the dead white male canon to understand liberalism, he underplays what I believe is a major, if not the major, objection that conservative thinkers have to liberal democracy: They hate the liberation of women.

From Salon

This was a direct hit at her dead father, Sir Leslie Stephen, the Victorian patriarch who had been the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a dead white male heterosexual enterprise.

From The Guardian