rice-eater

English

Alternative forms

• rice eater

Noun

rice-eater (plural rice-eaters)

1. One whose diet uses rice as a staple, as opposed to wheat or some other grain.
   • 1951, Joseph Gillman, Theodor Gillman, Perspectives in Human Malnutrition:

     The beneficial effects alleged to result from the addition of vitamin B₁ to the diet of the rice-eater suffering from beri-beri are not necessarily due so much to the low level of this vitamin in the diet, but rather to the enhanced value of this vitamin by virtue of the peculiar combination...

   • 1956, Institute for Medical Research (Malaysia), Annual Report of the Institute for Medical Research, page 26:

     The main difference lies in the fact that the bread-eater usually eats a more varied diet and seldom depends upon bread to so great an extent as the rice-eater depends upon rice.

   • 2012, Khushwant Singh, Kipling's India, →ISBN:

     But the people to whom he brought the life-giving stuffs were rice-eaters. They knew how to hull rice in their mortars, but they knew nothing of the heavy stone querns of the North, and less of the material that the white man convoyed so laboriously.

2. (slang, derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) A person who is Asian or of Asian descent.
   • 2011, Timothy McCarthy, John McMillian, The Radical Reader, →ISBN:

     He's won his last battle. He failed to win the Korean War. He couldn't win it. He had to sign a truce. That's a loss. Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice-eaters, he's lost the battle.

   • 2012, Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, Chopper Unchopped, →ISBN:

     These little fellows have already built themselves a sort of rice-eater intelligence network from Richmond, Springvale and Footscray, rightthrough to Cabramatta in NSW and Fortitude Valley in Queensland.

   • 2014, JR Carroll, Cheaters, →ISBN:

     All you rice-eaters are cunning, shifty little shits, aren't you?

   • 2015, Harry Anderson Jr., Sandra’s Saga Matthew’s World: A Story of a Bi-Racial Family, →ISBN:

     I've heard my share of racial slurs of Jap, Pearl Harbor, Slant-eyed gook, rice-eater, Geisha Girl, chopstick chick and others. I just wanted to slug somebody!

See also

• bean-eater (slur towards Mexican people)
• potato eater (slur towards Irish people)