Uncle Tom
Americannoun
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a Black person, especially a man, considered by other Black people to be subservient to or to curry favor with white people.
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a person who exhibits overly deferential behavior.
noun
Usage
What does Uncle Tom mean? Content warning: this article includes content dealing with slavery and racism.Uncle Tom is a fictional character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. His name has become a highly offensive nickname some Black people use to accuse other Black people of subservient to white people and culture.How is Uncle Tom pronounced?[ uhng-kuhl tom ]
Other Word Forms
- Uncle Tomish adjective
- Uncle Tomism noun
Etymology
Origin of Uncle Tom
An Americanism first recorded in 1920–25; so called after the leading character in Uncle Tom's Cabin
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.
He praised John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” for its descriptions of capitalist exploitation and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” for the light it shed on slavery in the U.S.
In installments, its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, poured forth the tragic tale of the life of Uncle Tom, a fictional, enslaved Black man.
From Literature
The works she focused on included Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Saul Bellow’s “Henderson the Rain King” with an eye toward the depictions of black characters.
Paradoxically, at virtually the same time, the many stage adaptations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which dramatized, or melodramatized, the brutality of slavery, were an enduring sensation.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” first published as a serial in the National Era newspaper starting in 1851, became a challenge to all Americans to stand against slavery.
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.
