Alacrity

By Deane Barker • • tags: definition •
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Definition: prompt, responsive, cheerful and ready to help

Why I Looked It Up

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

This personage had been exerting himself, with great alacrity, in driving all the flock of domestics to the other end of the veranda.

A theme of the book, in fact, is how some slaves in the South exhibited this type of subservience to their oppressors. In fact, the title character – Uncle Tom, himself – was received poorly by some people who claim that his willingness to be subservient, instead of defiant and resistant, was a poor reflection on the state of slavery.

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Added on

From the spy novel Eurostorm:

Then he nodded toward the distant illumination and said with alacrity, “Those are the coastal lights of Tel Aviv.”

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From Team of Rivals:

Seward responded to Lincoln with alacrity. “I have cheerfully resumed the functions of this Department in obedience to your command…”

↑ Outbound link to – Uncle Tom’s Cabin December 20, 2022

This is a novel from 1851 designed to reveal the horrors of slavery. And it worked – it caused outrage across the United States and pushed the country toward the Civil War. The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was prompted to write the novel by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which…