redneck
pronunciation
How to pronounce redneck in British English:
UK [ˈrednek]
How to pronounce redneck in American English:
US [ˈrɛdˌnɛk]
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- Noun:
- a poor white person in the southern United States
Word Origin
- redneck (n.)
- "cracker," attested 1830 in a specialized sense ("This may be ascribed to the Red Necks, a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians in Fayetteville" -- Ann Royall, "Southern Tour I," p.148), from red (adj.1) + neck (n.). According to various theories, red perhaps from anger, or from pellagra, but most likely from mule farmers' outdoors labor in the sun, wearing a shirt and straw hat, with the neck exposed. Compare redshanks, old derogatory name for Scots Highlanders and Celtic Irish (1540s), from their going bare-legged. It turns up again in an American context in 1904, again from Fayetteville, in a list of dialect words, meaning this time "an uncouth countryman" ["Dialect Notes," American Dialect Society, Vol. II, Part VI, 1904], but seems not to have been in widespread use in the U.S. before c. 1915. In the meantime, it was used from c. 1894 in South Africa (translating Dutch Roinek) as an insulting Boer name for "an Englishman." Another common Boer name for an Englishman is "redneck," drawn from the fact that the back of an Englishman's neck is often burnt red by the sun. This does not happen to the Boer, who always wears a broad-brimmed hat. [James Bryce, "Impressions of South Africa," London, 1899]
Example
- 1. We caught that redneck red-handed .
- 2. Some people might get angry if you call them a redneck .
- 3. The well-dressed lawyer and the redneck .
- 4. It was once easy to dismiss darwin as a frontier town full of brawling fishermen dreamy hippies and redneck truckers .
- 5. Today was my first day as a senior at flatiron highschool in some small little redneck town in the middle of texas .