exoduster
/ˈɛksoʊˌdʌstəɹ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
4
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An African-American who migrated from a state along the Mississippi River in the Southern United States to Kansas, mostly between 1879 and 1881 during the Reconstruction era.
American usage
noun
Alternative letter-case form of exoduster.
Example Sentences
- "Ingalls [John James Ingalls?] wants congress to appropriate money for the colored exodusters. It strikes us that for a man who is holding on by a strip of his eye-brow, Ingalls is a little too unanimous."
- "Q [by Zebulon Baird Vance]. Goldsboro is about the center of this movement of the colored people to the West?—A. Yes, sir; a large number of ‘exodusters’ have left my section."
- "Kansas was diligently searched to find, if possible, some dissatisfied "exoduster," who, for the sake of his witness fees and mileage to Washington, would swear that he was dissatisfied with his new home, and wished himself back in Dixie. Perhaps a half dozen such were found, and their testimony has been paraded before the Senate with tremulous emotion by the Senator from Indiana."
- "In the spring of 1879 occurred the rush from the South, to which was given the name of the "Exodus," and the "Exoduster" for a time became a prominent figure in Kansas. Great numbers of black people, men, women, and children, arrived by rail at Parsons, from Texas, and on steamboats at Wyandotte and Atchison. The later comers represented the ex-slave population of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. […] In the late fall of 1877, "Exodusters" gathered from Topeka and other points, and founded the town of Nicodemus, in Graham county."
- "For perhaps ten seconds John contemplated a sudden and complete exodus with himself as the exoduster."
- "After the Civil War, Kansas became home to many African-American settlers, who were known as the "black exodust" and were described as having "Kansas fever." These exodusters established the first black settlement in Kansas in 1877 in Nicodemus, which is west of Topeka. This is the last survivor of a dozen all-black Kansas settlements and was declared a national historical landmark in 1974. […] Our heritage of early child education for the exoduster children calls to mind the words of Carl Becker's book "Kansas," published in 1910: […]"
Etymology
From Exodus (“departure of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt recorded in the Bible”), exodus (“sudden departure of a large number of people”) + -ster (suffix denoting someone who is, is associated with, or does a specified thing) (see the 1899 quotation), alluding to the story of the exodus of Israelites from Egypt which is related in the Book of Exodus in the Bible.
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɛksoʊˌdʌstəɹ/
- British English: /ˈɛksəʊdʌstə/
Usage
- American usage