Yankeen.adj.

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 MʽFingal 1 When Yankies, skill'd in martial rule, First put the British troops to school.

1775 Penna Gaz. 10 May in Notes & Queries 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 Journey 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 Brother 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 S. J. 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.

c1784 Nelson Let. 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 C. Smith Young Philosopher III. 11 If thou marriedst the heiress, thou must give up thy little American, thy fascinating yankey.

1836 T. C. Haliburton Clockmaker 1st Ser. 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 Blackwood's Mag. 69 409/2 When we next saw the Yankee [sc. a frigate], there we were coming right down upon him over the breast of the sea.

1887 ‘E. Lyall’ Knight-errant II. ii. 42 I really am Italian, though Signor Sardoni will call me a little Yankee.

1964 A. Wykes Gambling viii. 194 (caption) The ‘Yankee bet’ (a permutation bet covering four horses) that can be made with off-course bookmakers in Britain.

1976 Daily Record (Glasgow) 29 Nov. 23/5 Yankee bet: Six doubles, four trebles and an accumulator—Pikey (12.0 Windsor), Escapologist (1.45 Wolverhampton), Corrieghoil (2.15 Wolverhampton), Heidelberg (3.0 Windsor).

1892 R. L. Stevenson & L. Osbourne Wrecker xv. Nares, sullenly but busily drilling sea-shells with the instrument called a Yankee fiddle.

1875 E. H. Knight Pract. 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.

1904 B. Heckstall-Smith Dixon Kemp's Man. of Yacht & Boat Sailing (ed. 10) v. 94 The sheeting of a modern large jackyard topsail requires a master hand's attention, especially when it is fitted ‘Yankee fashion’, having three sheets, as very many now are—namely, the main topsail sheet, the outer and inner sheets on the ends of the jackyard.]

1912 B. Heckstall-Smith & E. Du Boulay Compl. Yachtsman vi. 152 A useful sail is the Yankee jib-topsail. This is the largest or balloon jib-topsail, and the modern and most efficient form of balloon jib-topsail is cut, like all modern head-sails should be, very high in the clew.

1928 Daily Mail 9 Aug. 19/6 There is a Yankee jib which, as one sail, covers more than the combined area of jib and foresail.

1939 U. Fox Crest of Wave 145 We had settled down with the large Yankee jib topsail set in the place of the double clewed jib.

1976 Yachts & Yachting 20 Aug. 339/3 At 30 knots across the deck she dropped her yankee jib and kept going under staysail and heavily reefed main.

1803 Spirit of Public Jrnls. 6 350 More wit from Yankee-land.

1837 N. 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. in R. H. Thornton Amer. Gloss. (1912) I come here to retail My Yankee notions,—cheese, wit, verse, codfishes, Cider, et cetera.

1825 J. Neal Brother Jonathan II. xxii. 298 The tallow, corn, cotton, hams, hides, and so forths, which we had got, in exchange for a load of Yankee notions.

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

1884 Harper's Mag. June 125/1 Ohio was called ‘the Yankee State’.