uncle tom

1. 1.

   a servile black character in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe

   Broaderfictional character

Questions about uncle tom

What does uncle tom mean?

uncle tom means "a servile black character in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe".

Is uncle tom a common word?

uncle tom is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.