bywoner, noun
- Forms:
- Show more Also baywhoner, beiwoner, bywohner, bywonner, by-wooner.
- Origin:
- Afrikaans, DutchShow more Afrikaans, by (earlier Dutch bij) with, at + woon dwell, reside + agential suffix -er.
1. In historical contexts. A landless white tenant-farmer or foreman, giving his labour in exchange for the right to occupy and work a portion of farm land on his own account. Also attributive. See also poor white. Cf. labour tenant.
1886 J.J. Aubertin Six Months in Cape Col. & Natal 235Then there is what are called the Baywhoner tribe among the Dutch..that live upon the landowners, their friends.
1990 D. Van Heerden in Sunday Times 16 Sept. 21The real Children of Verwoerd are the ones now conducting a reign of terror in black townships. A whole generation steeped in the culture of an underclass...Discriminated against, denied dignity, treated like bywoners in the country of their birth.
2. Figurative, and transferred sense. A socially inferior, dispossessed, or dependent person (or thing); a parasite. Also attributive.
1872 in A.M.L. Robinson Sel. Articles from Cape Monthly Mag. (1978) 283Of all the ‘bywohners’ hanging on to the skirts of the language there is only one to which we have a decided aversion — to wit, that symbol of Oily-Gammon- Iago-Judas-Iscariotism, ‘slim.’
A landless white tenant-farmer or foreman, giving his labour in exchange for the right to occupy and work a portion of farm land on his own account. Also attributive.
A socially inferior, dispossessed, or dependent person (or thing); a parasite. Also attributive.
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