A.Word.A.Day --Simon Legree

A.Word.A.Day

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Aug 11, 2020

This week’s theme
Characters related to slavery who have become words in the English language

This week’s words
Jim Crow
Simon Legree
Uncle Tom
topsy
Aunt Tom

Gordon, an enslaved man, who received these scars as a result of beating by his enslavers. He later served in the Union Army

Gordon, an enslaved man, who received these scars as a result of beating by his enslavers. Apr 2, 1863, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He later served in the Union Army.

Photo: McPherson & Oliver / Wikimedia

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Simon Legree

PRONUNCIATION:

(SY-muhn li-GREE)

MEANING:

noun: A harsh taskmaster.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Simon Legree, a brutal slaveholder in the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). Simon Legree has Uncle Tom, an enslaved man, whipped to death for refusing to divulge the whereabouts of two enslaved women who had escaped to freedom. Earliest documented use: 1857.

USAGE:

“The Simon Legree of the plot was Brahms, who routinely dumped on any young composer rash enough to seek his imprimatur.”
Don O’Connor; Bruckner & Rott: Quartets; American Record Guide (Washington, DC); Jul/Aug 2012.

See more usage examples of Simon Legree in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The hands that help are better far / Than lips that pray. / Love is the ever gleaming star / That leads the way, / That shines, not on vague worlds of bliss, / But on a paradise in this. -Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (11 Aug 1833-1899)

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