All 5 Uses
inferior
in
Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth
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- "The Jefferson party," he wrote privately at about the same time, "was formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior."†
Subsection 3inferior = (adjective) of low quality, or of lower quality or rank than something else OR (more rarely as a noun) a person of lower rank or status
- Chicago, July 10, 1858: Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position.†
Subsection 4 *
- Chicago, July 10, 1858: Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position.†
Subsection 4
- I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [applause]: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people......And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.†
Subsection 4
- He believed the Negro was probably inferior to the white man, he kept repeating, but in his right to eat, without anyone's leave, the bread he earned by his own labor, the Negro was the equal of any white man.†
Subsection 4
Definitions:
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(1)
(inferior) of low quality, or of lower quality or rank than something else -- sometimes used as a noun to refer to a person of lower rank or status
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Less commonly, specialized senses include:
- anatomy and botany -- a lower position on a body or plant (or pointed downward)
- typography -- a character that drops beneath a printing line (such as with subscript)
- astronomy -- having an orbit relative to the sun that is lower than earth's (making Mercury and Venus inferior planets)