sharecropper
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of sharecropper
Explanation
A sharecropper is a tenant farmer, someone who works land that's rented from its owner. Typically, a sharecropper will pay the landowner with part of the harvest, rather than money. The word sharecropper, an American invention from the 1880s, comes from the fact that these farmers would share their crops in return for the use of the land. This system became widespread in the southern states of the US after the Civil War, and it was in large part influenced by the end of slavery. There were both black and white sharecroppers well into the 1950s.
Vocabulary lists containing sharecropper
American History I
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March: Book One
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Just Mercy
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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.
The first Arhoolie record, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb.
From New York Times • May 10, 2023
Arhoolie’s first release was Mance Lipscomb’s “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” for which Strachwitz and friends personally assembled 250 copies.
From Seattle Times • May 6, 2023
Among editorial illustrators, Bernarda Bryson Shahn’s striking 1930s lithograph “Arkansas Sharecropper and Wife” reads like a bleaker companion piece to Grant Wood’s similarly composed “American Gothic.”
From Washington Post • Jan. 3, 2018
"Mance Lipscomb, Texas Sharecropper and Songster," was recorded in 1960 in the musician's shotgun house, and it launched Lipscomb into the surging U.S. folk-music revival.
From Reuters • Jan. 24, 2013
What this situation led to was described last week by Clarksdale's Sheriff H. H. Dogan after he had been summoned to the 200-acre Decker farm by Sharecropper Wiggins.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
