carpetbagged
Moved for advantage
Carpetbagged is the past tense of carpetbag, meaning to act as a carpetbagger—an outsider who moves into an area to exploit it politically or economically.
The term comes from Northerners who went South after the Civil War carrying cheap luggage made of carpet fabric.
Today it describes anyone who relocates opportunistically: He carpetbagged his way into a safe congressional district.
Affectionate term for rogue
- Freedmen's BureauPost-Civil War relief agency
- Radical RepublicansStrict Reconstruction-era congressional bloc
- ReconstructionPost-1865 national reunification period
- postbellumAfter a war
Fourteenth Amendment · Fifteenth Amendment · Thirteenth Amendment · sharecropping · enfranchisement · suffrage · civil rights · abolitionism
One excluded from group
- interloperOne who enters uninvited
- exploiterOne who uses unfairly
- speculatorOne wagering on outcomes
- adventurerOne pursuing exciting exploits
opportunist · profiteer · schemer · manipulator · impostor · usurper · parachuter · intruder
scalawag
Affectionate term for rogue
- Freedmen's BureauPost-Civil War relief agency
- Radical RepublicansStrict Reconstruction-era congressional bloc
- ReconstructionPost-1865 national reunification period
postbellum · Fourteenth Amendment · Fifteenth Amendment · Thirteenth Amendment · sharecropping · enfranchisement · suffrage · civil rights · abolitionism · Jim Crow
outsider
One excluded from group
- interloperOne who enters uninvited
- exploiterOne who uses unfairly
- speculatorOne wagering on outcomes
adventurer · opportunist · profiteer · schemer · manipulator · impostor · usurper · parachuter · intruder · mercenary
relocator
One who changes residence
- newcomerRecent arrival somewhere
- transplantMove tissue between bodies
- migrantOne who relocates
itinerant · drifter · nomadic · wanderer · sojourner · traveler · expatriate · displaced · temporary · rootless
carpetbaggednative-born
Born in referenced place
homegrown · native son · native daughter · rooted · born and bred
carpetbaggedgrassroots
Common people as political base
paid one's dues · authentic · genuine · organic · legitimate