BE slang: _fade_ "white person"

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:02 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> But there's an older entry under _fade_ 1, 'a worthless fellow', with a single cite from 1893.  Probably a coincidence, but…

That's the _shade_ that led to "shady (character)." Of course, that
doesn't preclude the possibility that its originating reference was to
the colored.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org