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Yankee.

A native or inhabitant of some part of the United States:

6 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈjæŋ.ki//ˈjeɪ̯ŋ.ki//ˈjɛ̃ŋ.ki/

  1. A native or inhabitant of some part of the United States: A native or inhabitant of the northern United States.

    Southern-US

  2. A native or inhabitant of some part of the United States: A native or inhabitant of the northern United States. A native or inhabitant of New England.

    Northern-US · Southern-US

  3. A native or inhabitant of some part of the United States: An anglo, someone without French ancestry; a native or inhabitant of the rest of the United States.

    French · Louisiana

  4. A native or inhabitant of some part of the United States: A native or inhabitant of the United States in general.

    Commonwealth · derogatory · sometimes

  5. Any individual associated with the Union; that is, the United States federal government, during the American Civil War.

    Southern-US · derogatory · historical · often

  6. A player for the New York Yankees.

  7. 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.

  8. A wager on four selections, consisting of 11 separate bets: six doubles, four trebles and a fourfold accumulator.

Where this word comes from

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".

verb/ˈjæŋ.ki//ˈjeɪ̯ŋ.ki//ˈjɛ̃ŋ.ki/

  1. to cheat, trick or swindle somebody; to misrepresent something

    Canada · US · dated · offensive · slang · sometimes
Where this word comes from

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".

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.