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
Delia Pettway Thibodeaux is a third-generation Gee’s Bend quilter whose grandmother was a sharecropper and whose bold, rhythmic quilts are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
From Seattle Times • May 10, 2024
We sat on the porch in a semicircle in camp chairs, me between the sharecropper and the millionaire.
From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
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.
