Yankee

The term "Yankee" (sometimes shortened to "Yank") has many different meanings, but all of them refer to people from the United States. Outside the country, "Yank" is used to refer to any American, including Southerners.

Within the Southern United States, "Yankee" is a name that refers, often in a mean way, to all Northerners or specifically to those from New England. The Oxford English Dictionary states that the term is "a nickname for a person from New England, or, more widely, of the northern States generally." During the American Civil War, it was "used by the Confederates to the soldiers of the Federal army"

Elsewhere in the United States, it often refers to people from the Northeast, especially those with New England cultural ties. That would include people, wherever they live, who have colonial New England settler ancestors.

Yankee Media

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  Boston, New England capital

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  President Calvin Coolidge of New England

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  Loyalist newspaper cartoon from Boston ridicules "Yankie Doodles" militia who have encircled the British forces inside the city.

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  "Yankee, go home", anti-American banner in Liverpool, United Kingdom

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  A man dressed as a 1990s Japanese yankī (2015)

Other websites

• Online Etymology Dictionary
• Wordorigins.org Archived 2017-12-06 at the Wayback Machine