Please enable javascript to see: All 16 uses | For the second week in a row, I leave out Hilly's bathroom initiative. – initiative = proposal or thing started ([object Promise]) – Chpt 6 |...

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All 16 Uses of

initiative

in

The Help

" "That's exactly why I've designed the Home Help Sanitation Initiative," Miss Hilly say.†
Chpt 1

I want my initiative in the next newsletter, a full page next to the photo ops.†
Chpt 5

"It's called the Home Help Sanitation Initiative--William Junior you get down or I will snatch you baldheaded Yule May get in here--and I want it in this week.†
Chpt 5

Hilly smiles at me and I realize she's about to bring up the initiative.†
Chpt 6

For the second week in a row, I leave out Hilly's bathroom initiative.
Chpt 6 *

initiative = proposal or thing started (in this case a movement or plan to segregate private bathrooms)

It is one page, written in Hilly's fat, curly pen: Hilly Holbrook introduces the Home Help Sanitation Initiative.†
Chpt 12

In fact, my satchel holds all the work we've done--Aibileen's and Minny's interviews, the book outline, a list of potential maids, a scathing, unmailed response I wrote to Hilly's bathroom initiative--everything I can't leave at home for fear Mother will snoop through my things.†
Chpt 13

But Hilly's bathroom initiative is in the open center section with the paper where I wrote Jim Crow or Hilly's bathroom plan--what's the difference?†
Chpt 13

"I told you five months ago to print my initiative and now another week has passed and you still haven't followed my instructions.†
Chpt 21

I will not print that initiative.†
Chpt 21

"I want that initiative in the newsletter before election time," she says and points to the ceiling, "or I'm calling upstairs, missy.†
Chpt 21

Then print the initiative.†
Chpt 21

I reach in my satchel and pull out the page of Hilly's bathroom initiative.†
Chpt 21

Then I type Hilly's initiative.†
Chpt 21

She concludes the list with, "And of course we thank our anonymous contributor of, ahem, supplies, for the Home Help Sanitation Initiative.†
Chpt 25

When I started typing out her bathroom initiative for the newsletter, typing words like disease and protect yourself and you're welcome! it was like something cracked open inside of me, not unlike a watermelon, cool and soothing and sweet.†
Chpt 27

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Highlighting 3 Senses of the Word

Definition:

(initiative)
the ability and tendency to determine what should be done and to start doing it without instruction

or:

to start something
The exact meaning of starting something depends upon the context. For example:
- "She did it on her own initiative." -- started it without anyone telling her to
- "She seized the initiative." -- started actions that force others to react to her rather than her having to react to them
- "the peace initiative" -- a plan or the start of actions to bring about something
- "a ballot initiative" -- a proposed law that is started by citizen petition rather than by the legislature (applicable in many jurisdictions such as California)