head rag
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.55 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A head covering comprising a piece of cloth wound around the head and knotted in the front, often associated with African American women.
American usage
Example Sentences
- "This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT going to show in the store."
- "1941, Sallie Carder (interviewee) in Federal Writers’ Project, Slave Narratives, Volume 13, Oklahoma Narratives, p. 27, During my wedding I wore a blue calico dress, a man's shirt tail as a head rag, and a pair of brogan shoes."
- "1981, Toni Morrison, interview with Charles Ruas in Danille Taylor-Guthrie (ed.), Conversations with Toni Morrison, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994, p. 114, […] black women slaves in this country were not, by and large, domestics in the house, with the headrag. They worked out in the fields […]"
- "Twain chooses here one of the most powerful and persistent racial markers with which to identify Roxana—her head rag. From this moment on, Roxana is “black”—her race does “show.”"
- "2014, Nikky Finney, Introduction to Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems by James Baldwin, Boston: Beacon Press, Hansberry died from cancer at the age of thirty-four, soon after her great work, A Raisin in the Sun, yanked the apron and head rag off the institution of the American theater, Broadway, 1959."
Etymology
Usage
- American usage