Jefferson Davis
8
6.5
- proper noun
- /ˈdʒɛfərsən ˈdeɪvɪs/
- Throughout the summer of 1862, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown engaged in a heated debate over the recently passed Confederate Conscription Act.
- Confederate President Jefferson Davis
- President Jefferson Davis
Examples
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This is whence... Mr. Jefferson Davis... ...has conducted his war, Tad.
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And Jefferson Davis has sanctioned this harebrained, incendiary scheme?
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Maybe we'll have Robert E. Lee and old Jefferson Davis himself in another box, both of them in chains.
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Jefferson Davis will soon be captured in Georgia.
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Confederate President Jefferson Davis escapes by train, abandons his White House of the Confederacy.
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The third articulation preceded the second by over a year, coming during his infamous exchange with Confederate president Jefferson Davis in the summer of 1862.
Academic text (2014) -
In an interview ten years later, the former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, states simply, "Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the death of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has ever known."
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Governor Brown's summer exchange with Confederate president Jefferson Davis spelled out in vivid detail the political and ideological differences between the two men on the issues of a national draft.
Academic text (2014) -
Scarcely 36 hours after Jefferson Davis has fled his capital, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the surrendered home of the Confederate president.
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In February 1861, the Confederate States of America elected their first president, Jefferson Davis, to lead them during the Civil War.
Surface Forms
Morphology
Jefferson + Davis
This is a proper name referring to a specific historical person; the identity and biographical meaning cannot be derived from the constituent names 'Jefferson' and 'Davis' alone. Recognizing this MWE requires factual/cultural knowledge rather than compositional understanding, so a B1 learner who only knows the word forms would not infer the intended referent.
Etymology
Jefferson Davis was named after President Thomas Jefferson, and his last name was the family name Davis. He became the 'president of the Confederate States' during the American Civil War, so his name now makes people think of that Confederate leader.