grandfather clause
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.80 in modern English
27
Scrabble Score
17
Letters
4
Syllables
13
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A clause or section, especially in a law, granting exceptions for people or organisations who were affected by previous conditions.
Example Sentences
- "Many building codes include a grandfather clause exempting older buildings until some amount of remodeling occurs."
- "The “grandfather clause” provides that no man whose grandfather could not vote, can exercise the right of franchise. It will thus disenfranchise many negroes, whose grandfathers were slaves."
- "Under the Fifteenth Amendment there is little political legislation, except the effort in Southern States by educational or property qualifications, and most questionably by the so-called "grandfather clause," to exclude most negroes from the right of suffrage."
- "The compromise that was finally struck will eliminate the minimum benefit for future retirees. But a “grandfather” clause allows the three million pensioners already receiving it to keep on getting it."
- "A grandfather clause will allow senior members retiring this year to transfer these funds to their personal bank accounts."
- "In 1915, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Guinn v. United States that grandfather clauses were unconstitutional. The court in those days upheld any number of segregationist laws — and even in Guinn specified that literacy tests untethered from grandfather clauses were OK."
Etymology
From late 19th-century legislation and constitutional amendments passed by a number of U.S. Southern states, which created new literacy and property restrictions on voting, but exempted those whose grandfathers had the right to vote before the American Civil War. The intent and effect of such rules was to prevent poor and illiterate African American former slaves and their descendants from voting, but without denying poor and illiterate whites the right to vote.