yankee
/ˈjæŋ.ki/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.60 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A native or inhabitant of some part of the United States:
noun
A native or inhabitant of some part of the United States:
noun
A native or inhabitant of some part of the United States:
noun
Any individual associated with the Union; that is, the United States federal government, during the American Civil War.
Derogatory
noun
A large triangular headsail used in light or moderate winds and set on the fore topmast stay. Unlike a genoa it does not fill the whole fore triangle, but is set in combination with the working staysail.
noun
A wager on four selections, consisting of 11 separate bets: six doubles, four trebles and a fourfold accumulator.
Example Sentences
- "[…]so that I couldn't help telling her, sir, that in our country, leastways in Virginia (they say the Yankees are very pert), young people don't speak of their elders so."
- "“So, he is the father of Emmie Slattery’s baby,” thought Scarlett. “Oh, well. What else can you expect from a Yankee man and a white-trash girl?”"
- "...in a short time, a kind of infectious mirth and pride in their bargains took possession of the place, and every one bought something, holding out their purchases to view, and praising them in the words and phraseology of the young yankees, who, finding their own importance, were not slow to avail themselves of it,..."
- "Betting is complicated with win bets, place bets, each-way bets and complex bets such as doubles, trebles, Yankees and the like."
- "Kentuckians reportedly regarded a Yankee “as a sort of Jesuit” because of his religious zeal, while in Illinois the term yankeed was synonymous with cheated."
- "As the coach was by law limited to a slow pace on the bridge, we had leisure to read the wayward fancies of our predecessors inscribed in chalk, and many a true yankee name did we recognize;—the bridge is a kind of traveller’s register."
Etymology
First attested in 1765, when it was described as "a name of derision … given by the Southern people on the Continent to those of New England". Various suggestions have been made as to its origin: that it derives from a Cherokee word meaning "slave" or "coward" and was applied to the New Englanders by the Virginians because the former refused to aid the latter in a war against the Cherokees; that it derives from Yengees, an Indian corruption of English; and that it derives from Janke, a pet form of the common Dutch forename Jan. The OED regards the last of these as "perhaps the most plausible".