noun
Meaning 1
A head covering comprising a piece of cloth wound around the head and knotted in the front, often associated with African American women.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: US
Examples
- 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 [...]
- 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.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided