scalawag
Americannoun
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a scamp; rascal.
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U.S. History. a native white Southerner who collaborated with the occupying forces during Reconstruction, often for personal gain.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of scalawag
An Americanism dating back to 1840–50; origin uncertain
Explanation
A scalawag is a lying, no-good rascal. Scalawags are not to be trusted, but sometimes they’re a little bit cute. A scalawag would take the cookies right off your plate! This funny, old-fashioned word refers to people who are deceitful and untrustworthy. Scalawags are up to no good. Someone who steals your wallet or lies to your face is a scalawag. Scalawags play tricks and break laws, but they don’t do serious crimes. In U.S. history, scalawag has a more specific meaning: it refers to white Southerners who, after the American Civil War, supported the policies of Reconstruction that dismantled the Confederacy and granted citizenship to formerly enslaved people.
Vocabulary lists containing scalawag
"The Treasure of Lemon Brown"
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Chapter 18: The Reconstruction Era
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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Chadha-Patel is ambiguously charming as a scalawag not entirely out for himself.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 30, 2022
At 82, the retiree-to-be returns one last time to playing a good-hearted scalawag in the mode of the Sundance Kid and the flimflam man he portrayed in “The Sting.”
From Seattle Times • Oct. 9, 2018
Caballero, the most prolific scalawag identified by the super-recognizers to date, received only four years in prison.
From The New Yorker • Aug. 15, 2016
I recall sitting there as Starr, his blue eyes owlish, his skin pink and dimpled, sat before Congress and in a sonorous I-say-this-more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone, pounced light as a cat on a scalawag president.
From New York Times • May 26, 2016
“What you thinking, child? Can’t you see you parading ’round with us is telling every scalawag twixt here and Carol-liney, ‘All what stands twixt you and three thousand dollar is this dumb o’ergrowed sharecropper?’
From "The Journey of Little Charlie" by Christopher Paul Curtis
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
