Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Glossary

Glossary of Terms

attorney

lawyer

bank

slope of land adjoining a body of water

carpetbagger

derogatory term for northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War to make a profit from Reconstruction

chignon

a roll of hair worn at the back of the neck

churn

stir, as in making butter

clapboard

a structure made of slats of varying thicknesses

emaciated

extremely thin

ember

the coal or ash of a dying fire

glade

open space in a forest

gravelly

low and scratchy

gully

a deep ditch or channel

indignant

righteously angered

lynching

a hanging executed by a mob, usually racially motivated

mercantile

country store

molding dish

apparatus that shapes the finished butter

ransack

plunder, pillage

share-cropping

a tenant farmer who gives his landlord a share of his crops rather than rent; a common system in the South post-slavery

snaggle-toothed

full of teeth that are broken or misaligned

switch

whip

welts

marks left over from a beating

Yankee

Civil War term for a person from the North