settings

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn vocabulary

179 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.

< select a category

ALL

uncategorized

This page requires javascript.

help & settings

[x]

display help icons

show definition by default

show uses by default

liberty pole: synonyms: liberty tree ???

► definition

Definition:

a tall wooden pole, often used as a type of flagstaff, planted in the ground, surmounted by a Phrygian cap. The symbol originated in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Roman dictator Julius Caesar by a group of Rome's Senators in 44 BC. Immediately after Caesar was killed, the leaders of the assassination plot went to meet a crowd of Romans at the Roman Forum; a pileus (a kind of skullcap that identified a freed slave) was placed atop a pole to symbolize that the Roman people had been freed from the rule of Caesar, which the assassins claimed had become a tyranny because it overstepped the authority of the Senate and thus betrayed the Republic.

[They] were often erected in town squares in the years before and during the American Revolution (e.g. Concord, Massachusetts; Newport, Rhode Island; Caughnawaga, New York; Savannah, Georgia and Englewood, New Jersey). Some colonists erected liberty poles on their own private land (such as in Bedford, Massachusetts since 1964 and Woburn, Massachusetts—the pole raising there is reenacted annually). An often violent struggle over liberty poles erected by the Sons of Liberty in New York City raged for 10 years. The poles were periodically destroyed by the royal authorities (see the Battle of Golden Hill), only to be replaced by the Sons with new ones.

^{text from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike}
^{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/}
^{image: by Johann Wolfgang Goethe}
^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Freiheitsbaum.jpg}

► uses

Uses:

Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards.

Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

---

In Burgundy and in the southern towns they planted the liberty tree; that is to say, a pole surmounted by a red cap.

Victor Hugo. Les Misérables