Yankee

sb. and a. Also 8–9 Yankey, Yanky, pl. Yankies. [Source unascertained.

  The two earliest statements as to its origin were published in 1789: Thomas Anburey, a British officer who served under Burgoyne in the War of Independence, in his Travels, II. 50, derives Yankee from Cherokee cankke slave, coward, which he says was applied to the inhabitants of New England by the Virginians for not assisting them in a war with the Cherokees; William Gordon in Hist. Amer. War states that it was a favorite word with farmer Jonathan Hastings of Cambridge, Mass., c. 1713, who used it in the sense of ‘excellent.’ Appearing next in order of date (1822) is the statement which has been most widely accepted, viz., that the word has been evolved from North American Indian corruptions of the word English through Yengees to Yankees (Heckewelder, Indian Nations, iii. ed. 1876, p. 77); cf. YENGEE.

  Perhaps the most plausible conjecture is that it comes from Du. Janke, dim. of Jan John, applied as a derisive nickname by either Dutch or English in the New England states (J. N. A. Thierry, 1838, in Life of Ticknor, 1876, II. vii. 124). The existence of Yank(e)y, Yankee, as a surname or nickname (often with Dutch associations) is vouched for by the following references:

1683.  Cal. St. Papers, Colon. Ser. (1898), 457. They [sc. pirates] sailed from Bonaco…; chief commanders, Vanhorn, Laurens, and Yankey Duch. Ibid. (1684), 733. A sloop … unlawfully seized by Captain Yankey. Ibid. (1687), (1899), 456. Captains John Williams (Yankey) and Jacob Everson (Jacob).

1687–8.  MSS. Earl of Dartmouth, in 11th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm., App. V. 136. The pirates Yanky and Jacobs.

1697.  Dampier, Voy., I. iii. 38.

1725.  Inventory of W. Marr of Carolina, in N. & Q., 5th Ser. X. 467. Item one negroe man named Yankee to be sold.

  Cf. also ‘Dutch yanky’ s.v. YANKY.]

  A.  sb.

  1.  a. U.S. A nickname for a native or inhabitant of New England, or, more widely, of the northern States generally; during the War of Secession applied by the Confederates to the soldiers of the Federal army.

1765.  Oppression, a Poem by an American (with notes by a North Briton), 17. From meanness first this Portsmouth Yankey rose. Note, ‘Portsmouth Yankey,’ It seems, our hero being a New Englander by birth, has a right to the epithet of Yankey; a name of derision, I have been informed, given by the Southern people on the Continent, to those of New England: what meaning there is in the word, I never could learn.

1775.  J. Trumbull, M‘Fingal, I. I. When Yankies, skill’d in martial rule, First put the British troops to school. Editor’s note, Yankies—a term formerly of derision, but now merely of distinction, given to the people of the four eastern States.

1775.  Penna Gazette, 10 May, in N. & Q., 1st Ser. VI. 57/1. They [sc. the British troops] were roughly handled by the Yankees, a term of reproach for the New Englanders, when applied by the regulars.

1778.  Muse’s Mirrour, I. 220. O My Yankee, my Yankee, And O my Yankee, my sweet-ee, And was its nurse North asham’d Because such a bantling hath beat-ee?

1817.  M. Birkbeck, Notes Journ. Amer. (1818), 19. The enterprising people [at Richmond, Virginia] are mostly strangers; Scotch, Irish, and especially New England men, or Yankees, as they are called.

1825.  J. Neal, Bro. Jonathan, i. I. 13. He was a Yankee, the very character of whom is, that he can ‘turn his hand,’ as he says, ‘to any thing.’

1891.  Duncan, Amer. Girl in London, 23. The Yankees are the New Englanders,… the name would once have been taken as an insult by a Southerner.

  b.  By English writers and speakers commonly applied to a native or inhabitant of the United States generally; an American.

  Applied occas. to a ship (cf. Frenchman, etc.).

c. 1784.  Nelson, Lett. to Locker, in A. Duncan, Life (1806), 321. I … am determined not to suffer the Yankies to come where the ship is.

1796.  T. Twining, Trav. Amer. (1894), 68. Their wit was particularly directed against a ‘Yankee’ who was one of the company. We apply this designation as a term of ridicule or reproach to the inhabitants of all parts of the United States indiscriminately; but the Americans confine its application to their countrymen of the Northern or New England States.

1798.  Charlotte Smith, Yng. Philos., III. 11. If thou marriedst the heiress, thou must give up thy little American, thy fascinating yankey.

1836.  Haliburton, Clockm., Ser. I. ix. I’ll be d——d, said he, if ever I saw a Yankee that didn’t bolt his food whole like a Boa Constrictor.

1851.  Blackw. Mag., LXIX. 409/2. When we next saw the Yankee [sc. a frigate], there we were coming right down upon him over the breast of the sea.

1887.  ‘Edna Lyall,’ Knight-Errant, xvii. I really am Italian, though Signor Sardoni will call me a little Yankee.

  2.  [ellipt. use of the adj.] The Yankee language, the dialect of New England; loosely, American English generally.

1824.  J. Gilchrist, Etymol. Interpr., 8. The naked savages of Indiana already speak a corrupt English (or Yankee).

1836.  Haliburton, Clockm., Ser. I. i. You did not come from Halifax, I presume, sir, did you? in a dialect too rich to be mistaken as genuine Yankee. Ibid. (1840), Letter Bag, iii. 34. Coarse jokes in English, German, French, and Yankee.

  3.  Whisky sweetened with molasses. local U.S. colloq.

1804.  Fessenden, Orig. Poems, 97. Call on me when you come this way, And take a dram of Yankee.

  4.  pl. Stock Exchange slang. American stocks or securities.

1887.  Pall Mall Gaz., 6 Sept., 12/1. There was great excitement in the American market yesterday, and the bulls are cherishing the hope that there is to be a sustained boom in ‘Yankees.’

1908.  Daily Chron., 13 March, 1/7. Yankees finished higher on the lead from Wall Street.

  5.  A name for various special tools of American origin, or of ingenious design. (Cf. Yankee notions in C.)

1909.  Cent. Dict., Suppl.

  B.  adj. That is a Yankee; pertaining to or characteristic of Yankees (often with connotation of cleverness, cunning, or cold calculation); loosely, belonging to the United States, American.

1781.  A. Bell, in Southey, Life (1844), I. 37. The whole coast infested with Yanky privateers.

1784.  Abigail Adams, Lett. (1848), 161. We have curtains, it is true, and we only in part undress, about as much as the Yankee bundlers.

1822.  Cobbett, Weekly Reg., 9 March, 633. I was on board a little Yankee sloop in the Bay of Funday.

1828.  (title) The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette.

1829.  Marryat, Frank Mildmay, xx. I will show you a Yankee trick.

1886.  Froude, Oceana, 357. California with its gold and its cornfields,… its ‘heathen Chinese’ and its Yankee millionaires, was a land of romance.

1921.  H. L. Mencken, The American Language, 80. There was, indeed, no genuine relief until 1914, when the sudden prospect of disaster caused the English to change their tune, and even to find all their own great virtues in the degraded and disgusting Yankee, now so useful as a rescuer.

  b.  Used of or in reference to the language or dialect: cf. A. 2.

a. 1854.  Whittier, Charms & Fairy Faith, Pr. Wks. 1880, II. 239. A sort of Yankee-Irish dialect.

1866.  Lowell, Biglow P., Introd. Wks. 1890, II. 170. Of Yankee preterites I find risse and rize for rose in Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden.

  C.  Comb., etc. a. gen., as Yankee-like, -looking.

1799.  Aurora (Phila.), 30 Sept. (Thornton, Amer. Gloss.).

1836.  Haliburton, Clockm., Ser. I. xvii. I heard him ax the groom who that are Yankee lookin feller was.

  b.  Special combinations and collocations. Yankee gang, name in Canada for a special arrangement of gang-saws (see quot.); Yankee-land, the land of Yankees, New England; loosely, the United States; Yankee notions [NOTION 9 b], small wares or useful articles made in New England or the northern States; Yankee State, a nickname for Ohio.

1875.  Knight, Dict. Mech., *Yankee Gang, an arrangement in a saw-mill (Canada)…. It consists of two sets of gang-saws, having parallel ways…. One is the slabbing-gang, and reduces the log to a balk and slab-boards. The balk is then shifted to the stock-gang, which rips it into lumber.

1803.  in Spirit Publ. Jrnls., VI. 350. More wit from *Yankee-land.

1837.  Hawthorne, Amer. Note-bks., 13 July (1883), 57. It sounds strangely to hear children bargaining in French on the borders of Yankee-land.

1819.  Mass. Spy, 8 Sept. (Thornton, Amer. Gloss.).

1825.  J. Neal, Bro. Jonathan, xxii. II. 296. The tallow, corn, cotton, hams, hides, and so forths, which we had got, in exchange for a load of Yankee notions.

1889.  G. Kennan, in Century Mag., May, 82/1. I saw the American tin-ware, lanterns, and ‘Yankee notions.’

1884.  T. W. Higginson, in Harper’s Mag., June, 125/1. Ohio was called ‘the *Yankee State.’

  Hence Yankee v. (rare^–1), trans. to deal cunningly with like a Yankee, to cheat; Yankeedom, the realm or country of Yankees, the United States of America; Yankees as a body; Yankeyess, a depreciatory term for an American woman; Yankeefied ppl. a., made or become like a Yankee; characteristic of a Yankee; Yankeeish a., resembling a Yankee (whence Yankeeishly adv., like a Yankee); Yankeeism, Yankee character or style; a Yankee characteristic or idiom; Yankeeize v., trans. to make Yankeeish, give a Yankee character to.

1837.  Fraser’s Mag., XVI. 683. [They] are considered capable of *‘Yankeeing’ the more simple-minded Canadians.

1833.  Examiner, 3 Feb., 69/2. The author says of some Somersetshire settlers, that no dialect of *Yankeedom was so unintelligible to him.

1851.  Blackw. Mag., April, 417/1. He ought to take steamer direct for Yankeedom;… they’d make him President at once!

1890.  Miss Broughton, Alas, I. viii. Yankeedom and Cockneydom, rushing hand in hand through all earth’s sacredness.

1852.  Q. Rev., March, 297. The *Yankeyesses who urge the convenience of a manly garb.

1846.  Jas. Taylor, Upper Canada, 47. Some of the Canadians indulge in the *Yankeefied habit of bolting down their victuals.

1897.  Voice (N. Y.), 14 Jan., 8. Japan is getting Yankeefied in more ways than one.

1855.  De Quincey, in ‘H. A. Page,’ Life (1877), II. xviii. 112. Waal, now, to speak *yankeeishly, I calculate your dander is rising.

1820.  Eclectic Rev., April, 359. The term unwell, when first brought up, was ridiculed as a *Yankee-ism.

1836.  Fraser’s Mag., XIII. 653. Guilty of all those Yankeeisms which distinguish the lout from the gentleman.

1865.  Visct. Milton & W. B. Cheadle, N.-W. Pass. by Land, ii. (1867), 18. Irish or German Yankees;… out-Heroding Herod in Yankeeism.

1864.  Guardian, 20 April, 386. We begin to fear that England is becoming *Yankeeised.

1877.  Sir F. Elliot, in Dowden, Corr. Sir H. Taylor, 377. The most certain of political tendencies in England is what … I will call the Yankeeising tendency.

1882.  H. E. Scudder, Noah Webster, viii. 289–90. Hawthorne, Yankeeizing the Greek myths, and finding all Rome but the background for his Puritan maiden, was asserting that new discovery of Europe by America.