taskable
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
(of an enslaved person held on a plantation) Considered to be capable of performing labour, especially field labour.
American usage; Obsolete
noun
On a plantation exploiting an enslaved labour force, a person considered to be capable of performing labour, especially field labour.
American usage; Obsolete
Example Sentences
- "a taskable intelligent agent; a taskable sensor"
- "1789, record of sale of enslaved people by Thomas Washington, cited in Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998, Part 1, Chapter 3, p. 198, footnote 85, [The 16-year-old boy has] been taskable these 3 years past."
- "1796, court record, Neufville v. Mitchell, 1 Desaussure 480, South Carolina, cited in Helen Tunnicliff Catterall (ed.), Judicial Cases concerning American Slavery and the Negro, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1929, pp. 277-278, defendant […] states […] many of them were diseased and not taskable;"
- "1813, Bahama Gazette, 19 December, 1813, cited in Howard Johnson, The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783-1933, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, p. 29, to oblige Planters to plant a certain quantity of Provisions to each taskable Negro"
- "Those [slaves] actually in the field were 44 taskables, while the remaining 13½ were employed as cart drivers, nurses, cooks for the negroes, carpenters, gardeners, house servants and stock minders […]."
- "[…] the whole labour of the 122 slaves maintained, does not exceed that which would be obtained from the employment of fifty-seven and a half able bodied labourers, or, in the language of the country, taskables."
Etymology
Word Breakdown
Usage
Inflected Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
Synonyms
taskable hand
working slave