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Glite Dictionary
sharecropping

sharecropping

1 5.7
A system where a farmer works land owned by someone else and gives part of the crop as rent
  • noun
  • /ˈʃɛrˌkrɒpɪŋ/
  • Archaic
translation icon : arrendamiento agrícola
  • Despite its challenges, sharecropping provided some families with enough income to survive in difficult economic times.
  • sharecropping arrangements
  • sharecropping families
  • sharecropping system

It is still the system at the peak of the creation of all these Jim Crow laws, that system of sharecropping.

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Examples

  • Sharecropping may have compounded the problems of the Black family after slavery.

    Academic text (2002)

  • Even after the demise of slavery, the sharecropping system and the ruthless exploitation inherent in de jure segregation hobbled African Americans.

    Academic text (2008)

  • My mother did a little sharecropping in Florida.

    Ray (2004)

  • Others have long histories of sharecropping.

    Academic text (1995)

  • Both sides end up embracing tenants, farming, sharecropping because it was such a desperately cash poor society.

  • In the Acu Valley, sharecropping would serve most ideally in the areas designated for vegetables, staples, and cotton.

    Academic text (1994)

  • However, by 1910, 92 percent of Delta farms were operated by sharecropping and 95 percent of the tenants were African American.

    Academic text (2018)

  • Far from being an aberrant reversion to a precapitalist or transitional stage of labor use, sharecropping had marked advantages for farm workers; unlike wage labor, it offered freedom from supervision and a guarantee that completed work would be paid.

    Academic text (2005)

  • Many farmers in the South relied on sharecropping after the Civil War to cultivate crops on other people's land.

  • The sharecropping system allowed landowners to earn money while providing farmers with a place to live and work.

Surface Forms

sharecropping singular
sharecroppings plural

Morphology

sharecropping = sharecrop (transparent) = share + crop + ing

The verb 'sharecrop' is a straightforward compound of 'share' + 'crop', and adding '-ing' forms the action/system noun; the relation is directly deducible.

Etymology

Sharecropping comes from the parts share ('part') and crop ('harvest'). It names a farming system where a farmer works land owned by someone else and gives a 'part' of the crops to the owner, so the word explains how the payment is made.