Peon (slang)

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A (figurative) peon (reflecting the former institution of peonage and modern analogs of it) is a person with little authority, often assigned unskilled tasks, or an underling or any person subjected to capricious or unreasonable oversight. In this sense, peon is often used in either a derogatory or self-effacing context.

There are other usages in contemporary cultures:

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Canadian English encompasses the varieties of English used in Canada, while Standard Canadian English is the Canadian standard variety of English. According to the 2016 census, English was the first language of 19.4 million Canadians or 58.1% of the total population; the remainder spoke French (20.8%) or other languages (21.1%). In Quebec, 7.5% of the population are anglophone, as most of Quebec's residents are native speakers of Quebec French.

Many words in the English vocabulary are of French origin, most coming from the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern English. English words of French origin, such as art, competition, force, machine, and table are pronounced according to English rules of phonology, rather than French, and are commonly used by English speakers without any consciousness of their French origin.

An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word boundaries, emphasis, and punctuation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peasant</span> Agricultural laborer or farmer with limited land ownership

A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs, and free tenants. Peasants might hold title to land outright, or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creole peoples</span> Ethnic groups formed from mixed cultural and linguistic ancestry

Creole peoples may refer to different ethnic groups around the world. The term has been used with various meanings, often conflicting or varying from region to region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Synecdoche</span> Use of a term for a part of something to refer to the whole or vice versa

Synecdoche is a type of metonymy; it is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something is used to refer to the whole, or vice versa. The term is derived from Ancient Greek συνεκδοχή (sunekdokhḗ) 'simultaneous understanding'.

A chaperone in its original social usage was a person who for propriety's sake accompanied an unmarried girl in public; usually she was an older married woman, and most commonly the girl's own mother.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burmese language</span> Official language of Burma (Myanmar)

Burmese Language; is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar, where it is an official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Burmans, the country's principal ethnic group. Burmese is also spoken by the indigenous tribes in Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, and in Tripura state in Northeast India. Although the Constitution of Myanmar officially recognizes the English name of the language as the Burmese Language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese, after Burma, the country's once previous and currently co-official name. Burmese is the common lingua franca in Myanmar, as the most widely-spoken language in the country. In 2007, it was spoken as a first language by 33 million, primarily the Burman people and related ethnic groups, and as a second language by 10 million, particularly ethnic minorities in Myanmar and neighboring countries. In 2022, the Burmese-speaking population was 38.8 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peon</span> Social category

Peon usually refers to a person subject to peonage: any form of wage labor, financial exploitation, coercive economic practice, or policy in which the victim or a laborer (peon) has little control over employment or economic conditions. Peon and peonage can refer to both the colonial period and post-colonial period of Latin America, as well as the period after the end of slavery in the United States, when "Black Codes" were passed to retain African-American freedmen as labor through other means.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Groom (profession)</span> Horse and/or stable manager

A groom or stable boy is a person who is responsible for some or all aspects of the management of horses and/or the care of the stables themselves. The term most often refers to a person who is the employee of a stable owner, but an owner of a horse may perform the duties of a groom, particularly if the owner only possesses a few horses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pakistani English</span> Dialect of the English language used in Pakistan

Pakistani English is the group of English language varieties spoken and written in Pakistan. It was first so recognised and designated in the 1970s and 1980s. Pakistani English (PE), similar and related to British English, is slightly different from other dialects of English in respect to vocabulary, syntax, accent, spellings of some words and other features.

Sharīf, also spelled shareef or sherif, feminine sharīfa (شريفة), plural ashrāf (أشراف), shurafāʾ (شرفاء), or shurfāʾ, is a title used to designate a person descended, or claiming to be descended, from the family of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It may be used in three senses:

  1. In the broadest sense, it refers to any descendant of Muhammad's great-grandfather Hashim, including all descendants of Muhammad's paternal uncles Abu Talib and al-Abbas.
  2. More often, it refers to a descendant of Ali, a son of Abu Talib and a paternal cousin of Muhammad, especially but not exclusively through Ali's marriage with Muhammad's daughter Fatima. In the sense of descendants of Fatima and Ali, the term effectively refers to all descendants of Muhammad.
  3. In the narrowest sense, it refers only to someone who descends from Fatima and Ali's eldest son Hasan. In this limited context, it is contrasted with the term sayyid ('lord', 'master', plural sāda,, which then refers only to the descendants of Hasan's younger brother Husayn.
<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cantonese</span> Variety of Yue Chinese

Cantonese is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. It is the traditional prestige variety of the Yue Chinese group, which has over 82.4 million native speakers. While the term Cantonese specifically refers to the prestige variety, it is often used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but partially mutually intelligible varieties like Taishanese.

Australian Aboriginal English is a cover term used for the complex, rule-governed varieties of English used by a large section of the Indigenous Australian population as a result of colonization. It is made up of a number of varieties which developed differently in different parts of Australia, and grammar and pronunciation differs from that of standard Australian English, along a continuum. Some of its words have also been adopted into standard or colloquial Australian English.

<i>Kata</i> Detailed choreographed patterns of movements in martial arts

Kata is a Japanese word meaning "form". It refers to a detailed choreographed pattern of martial arts movements made to be practised alone. It can also be reviewed within groups and in unison when training. It is practised in Japanese martial arts as a way to memorize and perfect the movements being executed. Korean martial arts with Japanese influence use the derived term hyeong and also the term pumsae.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tool and die maker</span> Class of machinist in manufacturing

Tool and die makers are highly skilled crafters working in the manufacturing industries. Variations on the name include tool maker,toolmaker, die maker,diemaker, mold maker,moldmaker or tool jig and die-maker depending on which area of concentration or industry an individual works in.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maldivian language</span> Indo-Aryan national language of Maldives

Maldivian, also known by its endonym Dhivehi or Divehi, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the South Asian island country of Maldives and on Minicoy Island, Lakshadweep, a union territory of India.

Kwambi or Otshikwambi is a dialect of the Ovambo language spoken by the Kwambi tribe in Northern Namibia. Unlike Ndonga and Kwanyama it does not have a standardized written form in schools but is used and written in the Roman Catholic Church in Namibia. It shares more features with Ndonga than with Kwanyama.

The Peonage Abolition Act of 1867 was an Act passed by the U.S. Congress on March 2, 1867, that abolished peonage in the New Mexico Territory and elsewhere in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of unfree labor in the United States</span> Aspect of history

The history of forced labor in the United States encompasses to all forms of unfree labor which have occurred within the present day borders of the United States through the modern era. "Unfree labor" is a generic or collective term for those work relations, in which people are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence, lawful compulsion, or other extreme hardship to themselves or to members of their families.

References

  1. "Peon". Computer-dictionary-online.org. Retrieved 2019-04-29.