Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun See
cotton-boll weevil .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Her Grandmother Hattie's voice bloomed like a Mississippi boll-weevil in her ear, All the men in our family got themselves ruint one way or another.
Ruination Elizabeth Westmark 2011
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There was at this time too a great surplus of labor throughout those sections affected by the boll-weevil, floods, and shortage of cars, which was ready to respond to this demand.
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It viewed the movement as a specific and temporary thing, and held that had there been no floods during 1916, and if the boll-weevil had not ravaged the cotton plantations, there would have been no migration, for the Negroes never would have been induced to go North.
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In regard to lynching as a cause of migration from Georgia, it is not easy to state exactly its effect on the movement, because the lynchings which occurred immediately before and during the migration were in the boll-weevil section where the economic conditions were also at their worst.
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In those sections where agriculture had had time since the invasion of the boll-weevil to reorganize itself on a mixed farming basis, with the emphasis placed on the raising of livestock, the demand for labor was decreased, and the wages were lowest, because this type of farming required less laborers a hundred acres than did the old type which emphasized mainly the raising of cotton.
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When the boll-weevil pest came and made the raising of cotton an impossibility, it became necessary to shift from the cotton crop to another which was not liable to be troubled by the weevil pests.
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In the first place the opportunities afforded Negroes to earn their subsistence were greatly curtailed by the boll-weevil pest which swept over the State a few years ago.
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This lack of capital was brought about by one or more of three causes, namely, a succession of short crops, the more recent advent of the boll-weevil, and a destructive storm in the summer of 1916.
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The floods and boll-weevil pests had, in many cases, either destroyed crops, or rendered the raising of them totally impossible, and in consequence had practically destroyed the very means of subsistence of the Negroes.
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In two instances occurring respectively in 1915 and 1916, in the boll-weevil section of this State, moreover, lynching parties killed not only the guilty Negroes but also others who were innocent.
madmouth commented on the word boll-weevil
Says Nina Simone, of a gentleman she disenjoys: "You're funkier than a mosquito's tweeter
You've got a mouth like a herd of boll-weevils"
December 14, 2013