Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

albino

UK/ælˈbiːnəʊ/US/ælˈbaɪnoʊ/
nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,782 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: albinos

An albino is a creature born with no colouring in skin or hair. An albino rabbit, albino deer, born albino.

It is an inherited inability to make melanin, and the eyesight almost always suffers because the pigment matters to the developing eye. In the wild an albino animal is conspicuous and rarely survives long. Of people, the preferred phrasing is a person with albinism.

Brocken Inaglory · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of albino

  1. 1nounalbinoA creature born with no colouring in skin or hair.B2+

    “A rare albino deer, completely white with pink eyes, was spotted in the forest.”

albino is a creature.

Where it comes from

Portuguese albino comes from Latin albus, white. Portuguese sailors used the word of people they met in West Africa.

  1. Spanish

    albino

  2. Portuguese

    albino

  3. English, today

    albino

Borrowed from Portuguese albino and Spanish albino.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

albino in the wild

  • While an organism with complete absence of melanin is called an albino, an organism with only a diminished amount of melanin is described as leucistic or albinoid.

    Albinism in humans

  • Traits of albinism commonly associated with the evil albino stereotype include pale skin, platinum blonde hair, and blue or pink-to-red eyes.

    Albinism in popular culture

  • Chicago Tribune movie reviewer Mark Caro says of this character type that it is someone "who looks albino and thus, in movie shorthand, must be vicious".

    Albinism in popular culture

  • A white elephant (also albino elephant) is a rare kind of elephant, but not a distinct species.

    White elephant (animal)

  • Ninety-eight percent of albinos die by the age of forty for reasons which could easily be prevented.

    Persecution of people with albinism

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.