Yan·kee
(yăng′kē)n.1. A native or inhabitant of New England, especially one of English descent.
2. A native or inhabitant of a northern US state, especially a Union soldier during the Civil War.
3. A native or inhabitant of the United States.
[Origin unknown.]
Word History: The first known attestation of the word Yankee is found in a letter from 1758 by General James Wolfe—he used it as a term of contempt for the American colonial troops in his command. The song Yankee Doodle, which in early versions was sung by British troops to mock colonial Americans, originally used Yankee in this way: Yankee Doodle came to town / For to buy a firelock / We will tar and feather him / And so we will John Hancock. However, colonial American soldiers turned the derisive epithet around and adopted it as a term of national pride. Many theories of the origin of this term Yankee have been advanced over the years. People already wondered about the word in 1809, when Washington Irving wrote a humorous explanation of the word as coming from a term that "in the Tchusaeg (or Massachusett) language signifies silent men." More serious proposals of a Native American origin of the word have also been made. Some have suggested, for example, that Yankee derives from the pronunciation of the English word English in one of the languages of the Native Americans. However, no form resembling Yankee has been found in records of any Native American language. According to what is perhaps the most popular theory of the origin of Yankee, it comes from Dutch Janke or Janneke, which are variants of Jantje, "Johnnie," the diminutive of Jan, the Dutch equivalent of the English name John. In this theory, Janke or Janneke would have originally been used in English as a nickname for Dutch settlers living along the Hudson River and then later extended to New Englanders. This theory finds some support in the application of the term Yanky, perhaps as a nickname, to a certain Dutch pirate active in the Caribbean in the 1680s. According to yet another theory, Yankee originated as a nickname or informal term for a Dutch person deriving from Jan Kees, a compound name made up of Jan and the common Dutch name Kees, short for Cornelius. Ultimately, however, there is not enough evidence to confirm any of these theories, and the origin of Yankee remains unknown.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Yankee
(ˈjæŋkɪ) or informal Yank
n1. (Peoples) often derogatory a native or inhabitant of the US; American
2. (Peoples) a native or inhabitant of New England
3. (Historical Terms) a native or inhabitant of the Northern US, esp a Northern soldier in the Civil War
4. (Telecommunications) communications a code word for the letter y
5. (Banking & Finance) finance a bond issued in the US by a foreign borrower
adjof, relating to, or characteristic of Yankees
[C18: perhaps from Dutch Jan Kees John Cheese, nickname used derisively by Dutch settlers in New York to designate English colonists in Connecticut]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
Yan•kee
(ˈyæŋ ki)
n. 1. a native or inhabitant of the United States.
2. a native or inhabitant of New England.
3. a native or inhabitant of a Northern state.
4. a Federal soldier in the Civil War.
adj. 5. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a Yankee or Yankees: Yankee ingenuity.
[1750–60, Amer.; perhaps back formation from Dutch Jan Kees John Cheese (taken as pl.), nickname applied by the Dutch of colonial New York to English settlers in Connecticut]
Yan′kee•dom, n.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.