Word.ws English Dictionary

Uncle Sugar

Uncle Sugar proper noun: a personification of the American welfare state.

Proper noun

Uncle Sugar

  1. (Southern US) A personification of the American welfare state.
    • “Uncle Sugar provides well for me. Because of Uncle Sugar I have a good education and the opportunity to retire when I'm thirty-five years old."2004, Shane Russell, Living Hell, page 25
    • [An Obama campaign ad] depicted a woman named Julia who from cradle to grave was dependent on all things "government" and could live her life only with the ever-present and all-guiding hand of Uncle Sugar.2014, Mike Huckabee, God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, page 102

Origin of Uncle Sugar

Blend of Uncle Sam + sugar daddy. Popularized by Mike Huckabee, though not original to him.

Questions about Uncle Sugar

What does Uncle Sugar mean?
Uncle Sugar means a personification of the American welfare state.
What part of speech is Uncle Sugar?
Uncle Sugar is a proper noun.

Words near Uncle Sugar in the dictionary

  1. Uncle Scrooge
  2. Uncle Scrooges
  3. Uncle Sham
  4. Uncle Shmuel
  5. Uncle Sucker
  6. Uncle Sugar
  7. Uncle Thomas
  8. Uncle Thomases
  9. Uncle Tom
  10. Uncle Tom Cobley and all
  11. Uncle Tomahawk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Uncle Sugar (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Uncle Sugar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/uncle_sugar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.