scabs

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As African Americans migrated from the rural South to the industrial North, they frequently secured jobs by working for lower wages than unionized whites or by serving as strikebreakers - "scabs" - when discriminatory white unions walked the picket line.

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Definitions (24)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (10)

  1. noun A crust discharged from and covering a healing wound.
  2. noun Scabies or mange in domestic animals or livestock, especially sheep.
  3. noun Any of various plant diseases caused by fungi or bacteria and resulting in crustlike spots on fruit, leaves, or roots.
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Examples (50)

  • He brought the scabs, and taught you to make a shallow scratch and put some scab in the cut, and save some of the scab that formed, and to go through the smallpox rituals, the diet and the prayers to the smallpox god. —  THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT - Kim Stanley Robinson
  • My body soon became a mass of scabs, a living petri dish for the culture of myriad forms of bacteria. —  CATCH ME IF YOU CAN - FRANK ABAGNALE JR.
  • Dried blood caked the cloth, but the scabs were clean, without infection. —  AnalogSFF,March2008
  • I wanted to rub them, but the scabs were better than fresh blood. —  Aeon Five
  • Or because they've busted unions and hired scabs, thereby grievously diminishing quality control all around? —  Dissident Voice
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