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First attested in 1683, as a name applied disparagingly by Dutch settlers in Nieuw Amsterdam (New York) to English colonists in neighboring Connecticut. It may be from DutchJanke(“Little John”), the old diminutive form of the common personal name Jan, or it may be from Jan Kees, the familiar form of "Johan Cornelius", or a variant of Jan Kaas, literally "John Cheese", the generic nickname the Flemings used for Dutchmen. It originally seems to have been applied insultingly to the Dutch, especially freebooters, before they turned around and applied it to the English. In English it was a term of contempt (1750s) before it came to be used as a general term for "a native of New England" (1765). The shortened form Yank was first recorded in reference to "an American" in 1778. James Fenimore Cooper suggested that it was a corruption of "English" via the intermediate form "Yengeese."
...in a short time, a kind of infectious mirth and pride in their bargains took possession of the place, and every one bought something, holding out their purchases to view, and praising them in the words and phraseology of the young yankees, who, finding their own importance, were not slow to avail themselves of it,...
[…]so that I couldn't help telling her, sir, that in our country, leastways in Virginia (they say the Yankees are very pert), young people don't speak of their elders so.
A wager on four selections, consisting of 11 separate bets: six doubles, four trebles and a fourfold accumulator. A minimum two selections must win to gain a return.
1980 March 20, New Scientist, volume 85, number 1199:
Betting is complicated with win bets, place bets, each-way bets and complex bets such as doubles, trebles, Yankees and the like.
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2011, Colin Woodard, chapter 17, in American nations, New York: Penguin, →ISBN:
Kentuckians reportedly regarded a Yankee “as a sort of Jesuit” because of his religious zeal, while in Illinois the term yankeed was synonymous with cheated.