mammy
IPA: mˈæmi
noun
- (childish) mamma; mother
- (US, historical, often pejorative) In the southern United States, a black nanny employed to look after white children; or in the antebellum South, a female slave who was close to the household and looked after the children.
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Examples of "mammy" in Sentences
- Beaufort by de Rhett family, when my mammy was a little pickaninny.
- Den he whisper soft an 'low widout any words, jes' like a mammy was a-singin 'to her baby.
- "I'm a poor little beggar, my mammy is dead," and mine, entitled the "Crippled Child's" Complaint –
- The whole family ... mammy, pappy, the free loadin 'mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially ‘lil cuz ...
- My mammy was a Crossland negro before she come to belong to Master Joe and marry my pappy, and I think she come wid old Mistress and belong to her.
- When I was a little boy I was a house boy, 'cause my mammy was the house woman, but when the war broke I already been sent to the fields and mammy was still at de house.
- In the whole world (it was all she had asked) there was no white child to call her mammy, no white lackey or gentleman (it was the extent of her dreams) beholden to her as to a nurse.
- "Well, child, it does sound mighty strange; the people here will laugh at you, child, but I guess it won't be long before this old woman you call mammy will take herself off from a person who has so long held her in bondage."
- "I guessed as much," said he, "yer see, after he got nabbed first, mammy she -- yer didn't know as mammy took an 'died, did yer, Bill?" and Joey faltered and let the Angel take possession of his cap and transfer it to her own curly head while the Tenement children applauded with jeering commendation, seeing there was a standing feud between Joey and the rest of the juvenile populace over its possession.
- She was both revered as "Mammy Pleasant" (in Cliff's novel, she cleverly presents a "mammy"-like M.E.P. playing the part while shrewdly smuggling fugitive slaves, whom she hid in her various houses and real-estate property, and moving about strategically in her militant support of the Harper's Ferry raid) and reviled as a "Voodoo Queen" (of course any black woman with that kind of power must have been putting spells on everyone, right?)
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