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.
“My grandmother was a sharecropper in Arkansas, and I know that this is the same thing,” a man shouts at one point as whistles shrill and a handheld siren wails.
From Slate • Feb. 11, 2026
Mr. Morrison’s, meanwhile, is on the porch of a Mississippi Delta sharecropper.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 26, 2025
Hamer, a former sharecropper and a leader of the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, objected to the seating of an all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
From Salon • Aug. 24, 2024
The son of a sharecropper and great-grandson of a Georgia slave, Thurmond became an attorney and has served for decades in state and local government.
From Seattle Times • Feb. 16, 2024
Papá showed them his green card, which Ito, the Japanese sharecropper for whom we picked strawberries, had helped him get years before.
From "Breaking Through" by Francisco Jiménez
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.
