peckerwood

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English

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Etymology

Inversion of woodpecker. Application to white people is due to the perception that the woodpecker is a symbol of whites, whereas the crow or blackbird is a symbol of blacks.

Pronunciation

Noun

peckerwood (plural peckerwoods)

  1. (Southern US, Appalachia, slang) A woodpecker.
    • 1900 January 15, T. P. Drowne, “A Trip to Fauquier Co., Virginia; With Notes on the Specimens Obtained.”, in Walter F. Webb, editor, The Museum: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Research in Natural Science, volume 6, number 3, Albion, page 38:
      On the morning of the next, one of Mr. White's daughters came into the house to inform me that there was a "peckerwood" in a tree in the yard. I immediately took my gun and went out to investigate thinking that perhaps it was a Pileolated Woodpecker, a bird I wanted to obtain.
    • 1953, Jesse Stuart, The Good Spirit of Laurel Ridge‎, New York: McGraw-Hill, →LCCN, →OL:
      When I was a boy, I rooted over an old dead sourwood to get some peckerwood eggs.
    • 1992, Robert Morgan, The Mountains Won't Remember Us: And Other Stories, New York: Scribner, published 2000, →ISBN, →OL, page 40:
      There was nothing but a peckerwood on an oak tree.
  2. (Southern US, Appalachia) A peckerwood sawmill.
    • 1933 January 7, Traffic Service Corporation, “Serving an essential Industry: Lumber”, in The Traffic World‎, volume 51, number 1, page 8:
      Throughout this territory are mills of every variety and size, from the small "peckerwood" tractor mill capable of cutting only a few thousand feet of lumber per day to the world's largest pine lumber mill with a capacity of more than one million feet per day.
    • 2002, John E. Lancaster, Judge Harley and His Boys: The Langdale Story, 1st edition, Macon: Mercer University Press, →ISBN, →OL, page 222:
      The Langdale Company's new centralized sawmill and debarker in 1958 constituted a tremendous advance over the old peckerwood technology.
  3. (US, offensive, slang, ethnic slur) A white person, especially a Southerner, or one who is ignorant, rustic, or bigoted.
    • 1946, Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, Bernard Wolfe, “Don’t Cry, Ma”, in Really the Blues, New York, N.Y.: Random House, book 1 (1899–1923: A Nothin’ but a Child), page 16:
      All the time I was stretched out on the infirmary cot I kept looking at the blank walls and seeing the mean, murdering faces of those Southern peckerwoods when they went after Big Six and the others with their knives.
    • 1967, John Oliver Killens, 'Sippi‎, New York: Trident Press, →LCCN, →OL, page 50:
      Just as prejudiced as a Mississippi peckerwood when it comes to colored people.
  4. (prison slang) A white (male) inmate, especially one who is racist or who is a member of a race-based prison gang.

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