The term Yankee and its contracted form Yank have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Their various meanings depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders , the Northeastern United States , the Northern United States , or to people from the US in general.
108-791: New Englanders , also called Yankees , are the inhabitants of the New England region in the Northeastern United States . Beginning with the New England Colonies , the name "New Englander" refers to those who live in the six New England states or those with cultural or family ties to the region. The region was originally inhabited by Algonquin Indigenous peoples , including the Abenakis , Mi'kmaq , Penobscot , Pequots , Mohegans , Narragansetts , Pocumtucks , and Wampanoag . The region
216-589: A Philological Society project of a small group of intellectuals in London (and unconnected to Oxford University ): Richard Chenevix Trench , Herbert Coleridge , and Frederick Furnivall , who were dissatisfied with the existing English dictionaries. The society expressed interest in compiling a new dictionary as early as 1844, but it was not until June 1857 that they began by forming an "Unregistered Words Committee" to search for words that were unlisted or poorly defined in current dictionaries. In November, Trench's report
324-712: A 1985 agreement, some of this software work was done at the University of Waterloo , Canada, at the Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary , led by Frank Tompa and Gaston Gonnet ; this search technology went on to become the basis for the Open Text Corporation . Computer hardware, database and other software, development managers, and programmers for the project were donated by the British subsidiary of IBM ;
432-576: A Yankee is a Vermonter. And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast. Major League Baseball's New York Yankees acquired the name from journalists after the team moved from Baltimore in 1903, though they were officially known as the Highlanders until 1913. The regional Yankees–Red Sox rivalry can make the utterance of the term "Yankee" unwelcome to some fans in New England, especially to
540-560: A bloody battle, and the remaining Yankoo Indians transferred their name to the victors—who were "agreeable to the Indian custom". Sonneck notes that multiple American writers since 1775 had repeated this story as if it were fact, despite what he perceived to be holes in it. It had never been the tradition of any Indian tribe to transfer their name to other peoples, according to Sonneck, nor had any settlers ever adopted an Indian name to describe themselves. Sonneck concludes by pointing out that there
648-466: A crewman from North Carolina nicknamed him with that epithet. The term Yankee can have many different meanings within the United States that are contextually and geographically dependent. Traditionally, Yankee was most often used to refer to a New Englander descended from the settlers of the region, thus often suggesting Puritanism and thrifty values. By the mid-20th century, some speakers applied
756-533: A dialectal rendition of Jan Kaas ("John Cheese"), the generic nickname that Southern Dutch used for Dutch people living in the North. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives its origin as around 1683, attributing it to English colonists insultingly referring to Dutch colonists. English privateer William Dampier relates his dealings in 1681 with Dutch privateer Captain Yanky or Yanke. Linguist Jan de Vries notes that there
864-411: A fascicle of 64 pages, priced at 2s 6d. If enough material was ready, 128 or even 192 pages would be published together. This pace was maintained until World War I forced reductions in staff. Each time enough consecutive pages were available, the same material was also published in the original larger fascicles. Also in 1895, the title Oxford English Dictionary was first used. It then appeared only on
972-496: A larger project. Trench suggested that a new, truly comprehensive dictionary was needed. On 7 January 1858, the society formally adopted the idea of a comprehensive new dictionary. Volunteer readers would be assigned particular books, copying passages illustrating word usage onto quotation slips. Later the same year, the society agreed to the project in principle, with the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles ( NED ). Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) played
1080-508: A limited number of sources, whereas the OED editors preferred larger groups of quite short quotations from a wide selection of authors and publications. This influenced later volumes of this and other lexicographical works. According to the publishers, it would take a single person 120 years to "key in" the 59 million words of the OED second edition, 60 years to proofread them, and 540 megabytes to store them electronically. As of 30 November 2005,
1188-550: A peculiar way". Murray had American philologist and liberal arts college professor Francis March manage the collection in North America; 1,000 quotation slips arrived daily to the Scriptorium and, by 1880, there were 2,500,000. The first dictionary fascicle was published on 1 February 1884—twenty-three years after Coleridge's sample pages. The full title was A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on
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#17328456319891296-447: A project, that was so incredibly complicated and that met every deadline." By 1989, the NOED project had achieved its primary goals, and the editors, working online, had successfully combined the original text, Burchfield's supplement, and a small amount of newer material, into a single unified dictionary. The word "new" was again dropped from the name, and the second edition of the OED, or
1404-476: A strong moral obligation to define and enforce standards of community and personal behavior…. This pietistic worldview was substantially shared by British, Scandinavian, Swiss, English-Canadian and Dutch Reformed immigrants, as well as by German Protestants and many of the Forty-Eighters . Yankees dominated New England, much of upstate New York, and much of the upper Midwest, and were the strongest supporters of
1512-431: A strong regional identity and a distinct history and culture within the United States. The region was named "New England" by English explorer John Smith in 1616. While the term "New Englander" can refer to anyone who resides in New England or has cultural ties to the region, the term "Native New Englander" refers to those New Englanders who were born in the region. Another term to refer to those who live in New England
1620-478: A third edition of the dictionary has been underway, approximately half of which was complete by 2018. In 1988, the first electronic version of the dictionary was made available, and the online version has been available since 2000. By April 2014, it was receiving over two million visits per month. The third edition of the dictionary is expected to be available exclusively in electronic form; the CEO of OUP has stated that it
1728-414: A total of 11 fascicles had been published, or about one per year: four for A–B , five for C , and two for E . Of these, eight were 352 pages long, while the last one in each group was shorter to end at the letter break (which eventually became a volume break). At this point, it was decided to publish the work in smaller and more frequent instalments; once every three months beginning in 1895 there would be
1836-453: Is " Yankee ". Depending on the context Yankee may refer to all Americans in general, but in the colloquial American context, it refers to those who live in the Northeastern United States and even more specifically New England. Originally employed to describe New Englanders with ancestral roots to the original English settlers , the term has evolved throughout American history to have a variety of contextual meanings. Yankee Outside
1944-618: Is disappearing even there. Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court popularized the word as a nickname for residents of Connecticut, and Connecticut Air National Guard unit 103d Airlift Wing is nicknamed "The Flying Yankees." The shortened form Yank is used as a derogatory, pejorative, playful, or colloquial term for Americans in Britain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, and New Zealand. The full Yankee may be considered mildly derogatory, depending on
2052-606: Is presumed to have no where else on the Globe a permanent local habitation, however ubiquitous he may be in his travels and pursuits. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas pointed out as late as 1966, "The very word 'Yankee' still wakens in Southern minds historical memories of defeat and humiliation, of the burning of Atlanta and Sherman's March to the Sea , or of an ancestral farmhouse burned by Quantrill's Raiders ". Ambrose Bierce defines
2160-413: Is sometimes used as a pejorative reference to Americans. In Finland, the word jenkki is sometimes used to refer to any American citizen, and Jenkkilä refers to the United States itself. It is not considered offensive or anti-American, but rather a colloquial expression. In Sweden, the word jänkare is a derivative of Yankee that is used to refer to both American citizens and classic American cars from
2268-482: Is the most-quoted female writer. Collectively, the Bible is the most-quoted work (in many translations); the most-quoted single work is Cursor Mundi . Additional material for a given letter range continued to be gathered after the corresponding fascicle was printed, with a view towards inclusion in a supplement or revised edition. A one-volume supplement of such material was published in 1933, with entries weighted towards
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#17328456319892376-531: Is the principal historical dictionary of the English language , published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first edition in 1884, traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, and provides ongoing descriptions of English language usage in its variations around
2484-549: Is uncertain; some scholars suggest that it was a term used in derision of the Dutch colonists, others that it was derisive of the English colonists. Michael Quinion and Patrick Hanks argue that the term comes from the Dutch Janneke , a diminutive form of the given name Jan which would be Anglicized by New Englanders as "Yankee" due to the Dutch pronunciation of J being the same as the English Y . Quinion and Hanks posit that it
2592-533: Is unlikely that it will ever be printed. As a historical dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary features entries in which the earliest ascertainable recorded sense of a word, whether current or obsolete, is presented first, and each additional sense is presented in historical order according to the date of its earliest ascertainable recorded use. Following each definition are several brief illustrating quotations presented in chronological order from
2700-462: The Los Angeles Times . Time dubbed the book "a scholarly Everest ", and Richard Boston , writing for The Guardian , called it "one of the wonders of the world ". The supplements and their integration into the second edition were a great improvement to the OED as a whole, but it was recognized that most of the entries were still fundamentally unaltered from the first edition. Much of
2808-523: The Korean War periods, Korean black markets that sold smuggled American goods from military bases were called "yankee markets" ( Korean : 양키시장 ). The term "yankee" is now generally viewed as an anti-American slur in South Korea , and is often used in the exclamation "Yankee go home!" ( 『양키 고 홈!』 ). Linguistic Oxford English Dictionary The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED )
2916-509: The Nobel Prize in Physics ). Also in 1933 the original fascicles of the entire dictionary were re-issued, bound into 12 volumes, under the title " The Oxford English Dictionary ". This edition of 13 volumes including the supplement was subsequently reprinted in 1961 and 1970. In 1933, Oxford had finally put the dictionary to rest; all work ended, and the quotation slips went into storage. However,
3024-551: The OED is neither the world's largest nor the earliest exhaustive dictionary of a language. Another earlier large dictionary is the Grimm brothers ' dictionary of the German language , begun in 1838 and completed in 1961. The first edition of the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca is the first great dictionary devoted to a modern European language (Italian) and was published in 1612;
3132-641: The OED2 adopted the modern International Phonetic Alphabet . Unlike the earlier edition, all foreign alphabets except Greek were transliterated . Following page 832 of Volume XX Wave -— Zyxt there's a 143-page separately paginated bibliography, a conflation of the OED 1st edition's published with the 1933 Supplement and that in Volume IV of the Supplement published in 1986. The British quiz show Countdown awarded
3240-399: The OED2 is mostly just a reorganization of the earlier corpus, but the retypesetting provided an opportunity for two long-needed format changes. The headword of each entry was no longer capitalized, allowing the user to readily see those words that actually require a capital letter. Murray had devised his own notation for pronunciation, there being no standard available at the time, whereas
3348-636: The OED2, was published. The first edition retronymically became the OED1 . The Oxford English Dictionary 2 was printed in 20 volumes. Up to a very late stage, all the volumes of the first edition were started on letter boundaries. For the second edition, there was no attempt to start them on letter boundaries, and they were made roughly equal in size. The 20 volumes started with A , B.B.C. , Cham , Creel , Dvandva , Follow , Hat , Interval , Look , Moul , Ow , Poise , Quemadero , Rob , Ser , Soot , Su , Thru , Unemancipated , and Wave . The content of
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3456-443: The Oxford English Dictionary contained approximately 301,100 main entries. Supplementing the entry headwords , there are 157,000 bold-type combinations and derivatives; 169,000 italicized-bold phrases and combinations; 616,500 word-forms in total, including 137,000 pronunciations ; 249,300 etymologies ; 577,000 cross-references; and 2,412,400 usage quotations . The dictionary's latest, complete print edition (second edition, 1989)
3564-542: The World Wide Web and new computer technology in general meant that the processes of researching the dictionary and of publishing new and revised entries could be vastly improved. New text search databases offered vastly more material for the editors of the dictionary to work with, and with publication on the Web as a possibility, the editors could publish revised entries much more quickly and easily than ever before. A new approach
3672-545: The battles of Lexington and Concord . Today, "Yankee Doodle" is the official state song of Connecticut. An early use of the term outside the United States was in the creation of Sam Slick the "Yankee Clockmaker" in a newspaper column in Halifax , Nova Scotia , in 1835. The character was a plain-speaking American who becomes an example for Nova Scotians to follow in his industry and practicality; his uncouth manners and vanity were qualities that his creator detested. The character
3780-622: The 1950s that are popular in rural Sweden. In the late 19th century, the Japanese were called "the Yankees of the East" in praise of their industriousness and drive to modernization. In Japan, the term yankī ( ヤンキー ) has been used since the late 1970s to refer to a type of delinquent youth associated with motorcycle gangs and frequently sporting dyed blond hair. Around the American occupation of Korea and
3888-510: The 1998 book The Surgeon of Crowthorne (US title: The Professor and the Madman ), which was the basis for a 2019 film, The Professor and the Madman , starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn . During the 1870s, the Philological Society was concerned with the process of publishing a dictionary with such an immense scope. They had pages printed by publishers, but no publication agreement
3996-605: The Congregationalists who brought their culture when they settled outside New England. The speech dialect of Eastern New England English is called "Yankee" or "Yankee dialect". Most linguists look to Dutch language sources, noting the extensive interaction between the Dutch colonists in New Netherland (parts of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware) and the English colonists in New England ( Massachusetts , Rhode Island , and Connecticut ). The exact application, however,
4104-427: The English language continued to change and, by the time 20 years had passed, the dictionary was outdated. There were three possible ways to update it. The cheapest would have been to leave the existing work alone and simply compile a new supplement of perhaps one or two volumes, but then anyone looking for a word or sense and unsure of its age would have to look in three different places. The most convenient choice for
4212-689: The Federal Government was controlled by bigoted Yankees and Irish who banded together against the Italian immigrant. The one anomaly of this era was the election of Yankee Republican Leverett Saltonstall as governor in 1938, and even then Saltonstall jokingly attributed his high vote totals in Irish districts to his 'South Boston face'. In the Southern United States, the term is used in derisive reference to any Northerner, especially one who has migrated to
4320-588: The French l'anglais , meaning "the Englishman" or "the English language", which was sounded as Y'an-gee . American musicologist Oscar Sonneck debunked a romanticized false etymology in his 1909 work Report on "The Star-Spangled Banner", "Hail Columbia", "America", "Yankee Doodle" . He cited a popular theory that claimed the word came from a tribe who called themselves Yankoos , said to mean "invincible". The story claimed that New Englanders had defeated this tribe after
4428-515: The Materials Collected by The Philological Society ; the 352-page volume, words from A to Ant , cost 12 s 6 d (equivalent to $ 82 in 2023). The total sales were only 4,000 copies. The OUP saw that it would take too long to complete the work with unrevised editorial arrangements. Accordingly, new assistants were hired and two new demands were made on Murray. The first was that he move from Mill Hill to Oxford to work full-time on
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4536-514: The OUP forced the promotion of Murray's assistant Henry Bradley (hired by Murray in 1884), who worked independently in the British Museum in London beginning in 1888. In 1896, Bradley moved to Oxford University. Gell continued harassing Murray and Bradley with his business concerns – containing costs and speeding production – to the point where the project's collapse seemed likely. Newspapers reported
4644-683: The South and maintains derisive attitudes towards Southerners and the Southern way of life. Alabama lawyer and author Daniel Robinson Hundley describes the Yankee as such in Social Relations in Our Southern States : Yankee with all these is looked upon usually as a term of reproach—signifying a shrewd, sharp, chaffering, oily-tongued, soft-sawdering, inquisitive, money-making, money-saving, and money-worshipping individual, who hails from Down East, and who
4752-652: The United States, Yank is used informally to refer to a person or thing from the US. It has been especially popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand where it may be used variously, either with an uncomplimentary overtone, endearingly, or cordially. In the Southern United States , Yankee is a derisive term which refers to all Northerners, and during the American Civil War it
4860-674: The United States, more than 120 typists of the International Computaprint Corporation (now Reed Tech ) started keying in over 350,000,000 characters, their work checked by 55 proof-readers in England. Retyping the text alone was not sufficient; all the information represented by the complex typography of the original dictionary had to be retained, which was done by marking up the content in SGML . A specialized search engine and display software were also needed to access it. Under
4968-537: The alphabet as before and updating "key English words from across the alphabet, along with the other words which make up the alphabetical cluster surrounding them". With the relaunch of the OED Online website in December 2010, alphabetical revision was abandoned altogether. The revision is expected roughly to double the dictionary in size. Apart from general updates to include information on new words and other changes in
5076-564: The colour syntax-directed editor for the project, LEXX , was written by Mike Cowlishaw of IBM. The University of Waterloo , in Canada, volunteered to design the database. A. Walton Litz , an English professor at Princeton University who served on the Oxford University Press advisory council, was quoted in Time as saying "I've never been associated with a project, I've never even heard of
5184-401: The complete dictionary to 16 volumes, or 17 counting the first supplement. Burchfield emphasized the inclusion of modern-day language and, through the supplement, the dictionary was expanded to include a wealth of new words from the burgeoning fields of science and technology, as well as popular culture and colloquial speech. Burchfield said that he broadened the scope to include developments of
5292-538: The country. The Spanish variation yanqui is used in Latin American Spanish, often derogatorily. Venezuelan Spanish has the word pitiyanqui derived around 1940 from petit yankee or petit yanqui , a derogatory term for those who profess an exaggerated and often ridiculous admiration for anything from the United States. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, the term seppo , shortened from traditional rhyming slang yank ==> septic tank ,
5400-415: The covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in 10 bound volumes. In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the former name in all occurrences in its reprinting as 12 volumes with a one-volume supplement. More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the second edition was published, comprising 21,728 pages in 20 volumes. Since 2000, compilation of
5508-539: The dictionary in Chicago, where he was a professor. The fourth editor was Charles Talbut Onions , who compiled the remaining ranges starting in 1914: Su–Sz , Wh–Wo , and X–Z . In 1919–1920, J. R. R. Tolkien was employed by the OED , researching etymologies of the Waggle to Warlock range; later he parodied the principal editors as "The Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford" in the story Farmer Giles of Ham . By early 1894,
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#17328456319895616-459: The dictionary. In 1878, Oxford University Press agreed with Murray to proceed with the massive project; the agreement was formalized the following year. 20 years after its conception, the dictionary project finally had a publisher. It would take another 50 years to complete. Late in his editorship, Murray learned that one especially prolific reader, W. C. Minor , was confined to a mental hospital for (in modern terminology) schizophrenia . Minor
5724-523: The earliest ascertainable use of the word in that sense to the last ascertainable use for an obsolete sense, to indicate both its life span and the time since its desuetude, or to a relatively recent use for current ones. The format of the OED ' s entries has influenced numerous other historical lexicography projects. The forerunners to the OED , such as the early volumes of the Deutsches Wörterbuch , had initially provided few quotations from
5832-421: The earliest recorded use of the word "Yankee" in 1758 when he referred to the New England soldiers under his command. "I can afford you two companies of Yankees, and the more, because they are better for ranging and scouting than either work or vigilance". Later British use of the word was in a derogatory manner, as seen in a cartoon published in 1775 ridiculing "Yankee" soldiers. New Englanders themselves employed
5940-421: The finished dictionary; Bradley died in 1923, having completed E–G , L–M , S–Sh , St , and W–We . By then, two additional editors had been promoted from assistant work to independent work, continuing without much trouble. William Craigie started in 1901 and was responsible for N , Q–R , Si–Sq , U–V , and Wo–Wy. The OUP had previously thought London too far from Oxford but, after 1925, Craigie worked on
6048-650: The first edition of Dictionnaire de l'Académie française dates from 1694. The official dictionary of Spanish is the Diccionario de la lengua española (produced, edited, and published by the Royal Spanish Academy ), and its first edition was published in 1780. The Kangxi Dictionary of Chinese was published in 1716. The largest dictionary by number of pages is believed to be the Dutch Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal . The dictionary began as
6156-673: The following year under the administrative direction of Timothy J. Benbow, with John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner as co-editors. In 2016, Simpson published his memoir chronicling his years at the OED: The Word Detective: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary – A Memoir (New York: Basic Books). Thus began the New Oxford English Dictionary (NOED) project. In
6264-676: The former prevail wherever the latter are found. Although the genuine Yankee belongs to New England, the term "Yankee" is now as appropriate to the natives of the Union at large. Yankees settled other states in various ways: some joined highly organized colonization companies, others purchased groups of land together; some joined volunteer land settlement groups, and self-reliant individual families also migrated. Yankees typically lived in villages consisting of clusters of separate farms. Often they were merchants, bankers, teachers, or professionals. Village life fostered local democracy, best exemplified by
6372-547: The group published the first sample pages; later that month, Coleridge died of tuberculosis , aged 30. Thereupon Furnivall became editor; he was enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but temperamentally ill-suited for the work. Many volunteer readers eventually lost interest in the project, as Furnivall failed to keep them motivated. Furthermore, many of the slips were misplaced. Furnivall believed that, since many printed texts from earlier centuries were not readily available, it would be impossible for volunteers to efficiently locate
6480-522: The harassment, particularly the Saturday Review , and public opinion backed the editors. Gell was fired, and the university reversed his cost policies. If the editors felt that the dictionary would have to grow larger, it would; it was an important work, and worth the time and money to properly finish. Neither Murray nor Bradley lived to see it. Murray died in 1915, having been responsible for words starting with A–D , H–K , O–P , and T , nearly half
6588-680: The inauguration in June 2005 of the "Perfect All-Singing All-Dancing Editorial and Notation Application ", or "Pasadena". With this XML -based system, lexicographers can spend less effort on presentation issues such as the numbering of definitions. This system has also simplified the use of the quotations database, and enabled staff in New York to work directly on the dictionary in the same way as their Oxford-based counterparts. Other important computer uses include internet searches for evidence of current usage and email submissions of quotations by readers and
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#17328456319896696-422: The information in the dictionary published in 1989 was already decades out of date, though the supplements had made good progress towards incorporating new vocabulary. Yet many definitions contained disproven scientific theories, outdated historical information, and moral values that were no longer widely accepted. Furthermore, the supplements had failed to recognize many words in the existing volumes as obsolete by
6804-526: The intention of producing a third edition from them. The previous supplements appeared in alphabetical instalments, whereas the new series had a full A–Z range of entries within each individual volume, with a complete alphabetical index at the end of all words revised so far, each listed with the volume number which contained the revised entry. However, in the end only three Additions volumes were published this way, two in 1993 and one in 1997, each containing about 3,000 new definitions. The possibilities of
6912-436: The key role in the project's first months, but his appointment as Dean of Westminster meant that he could not give the dictionary project the time that it required. He withdrew and Herbert Coleridge became the first editor. On 12 May 1860, Coleridge's dictionary plan was published and research was started. His house was the first editorial office. He arrayed 100,000 quotation slips in a 54 pigeon-hole grid. In April 1861,
7020-578: The language in English-speaking regions beyond the United Kingdom , including North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and the Caribbean. Burchfield also removed, for unknown reasons, many entries that had been added to the 1933 supplement. In 2012, an analysis by lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie revealed that many of these entries were in fact foreign loanwords, despite Burchfield's claim that he included more such words. The proportion
7128-488: The language, the third edition brings many other improvements, including changes in formatting and stylistic conventions for easier reading and computerized searching, more etymological information, and a general change of focus away from individual words towards more general coverage of the language as a whole. While the original text drew its quotations mainly from literary sources such as novels, plays, and poetry, with additional material from newspapers and academic journals,
7236-404: The late 1860s to educate the Freedmen . Historian John Buenker has examined the worldview of the Yankee settlers in the Midwest: Because they arrived first and had a strong sense of community and mission, Yankees were able to transplant New England institutions, values, and mores, altered only by the conditions of frontier life. They established a public culture that emphasized the work ethic,
7344-501: The late colonial period, many became Presbyterians , Episcopalians , Methodists , or, later, Unitarians . Strait-laced 17th-century moralism as derided by novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne faded in the 18th century. The First Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards and others in the mid-18th century, and the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century under Charles Grandison Finney and others emphasized personal piety, revivals, and devotion to civic duty. A pervasive influence on
7452-419: The leather-bound complete version to the champions of each series between its inception in 1982 and Series 63 in 2010. The prize was axed after Series 83, completed in June 2021, due to being considered out of date. When the print version of the second edition was published in 1989, the response was enthusiastic. Author Anthony Burgess declared it "the greatest publishing event of the century", as quoted by
7560-439: The letter M , with new material appearing every three months on the OED Online website. The editors chose to start the revision project from the middle of the dictionary in order that the overall quality of entries be made more even, since the later entries in the OED1 generally tended to be better than the earlier ones. However, in March 2008, the editors announced that they would alternate each quarter between moving forward in
7668-424: The modern Yankee stereotype. Coolidge moved from rural Vermont to urban Massachusetts and was educated at elite Amherst College . Yet his flint-faced, unprepossessing ways and terse rural speech proved politically attractive. "That Yankee twang will be worth a hundred thousand votes", explained one Republican leader. Coolidge's laconic ways and dry humor were characteristic of stereotypical rural "Yankee humor" at
7776-426: The most dedicated Red Sox fans living in the northeastern United States. The term Swamp Yankee is sometimes used in rural Rhode Island, Connecticut, and southeastern Massachusetts to refer to Protestant farmers of moderate means and their descendants, although it is often regarded as a derogatory term. Scholars note that the famous Yankee "twang" survives mainly in the hill towns of interior New England, though it
7884-677: The new Republican party in the 1860s. This was especially true for the Congregationalists , Presbyterians , and Methodists among them. A study of 65 predominantly Yankee counties showed that they voted only 40 percent for the Whigs in 1848 and 1852, but became 61–65 percent Republican in presidential elections of 1856 through 1864. Ivy League universities remained bastions of old Yankee culture until well after World War II , particularly Harvard and Yale . President Calvin Coolidge exemplified
7992-488: The new edition will reference more kinds of material that were unavailable to the editors of previous editions, such as wills, inventories, account books, diaries, journals, and letters. John Simpson was the first chief editor of the OED3 . He retired in 2013 and was replaced by Michael Proffitt , who is the eighth chief editor of the dictionary. The production of the new edition exploits computer technology, particularly since
8100-507: The northeast, while wealthy New Englanders also sent ambassadors to frontier communities where they became influential bankers and newspaper printers. They introduced the term "Universal Yankee Nation" to proselytize their hopes for national and global influence. New England Yankees originally followed the Puritan tradition, as expressed in Congregational and Baptist churches. Beginning in
8208-407: The open town meeting form of government that still exists today in New England. Village life also stimulated mutual oversight of moral behavior and emphasized civic virtue. The Yankees built international trade routes stretching to China by 1800 from the New England seaports of Boston , Salem , Providence , Newport , and New London , among others. Much of the profit from trading was reinvested in
8316-434: The outer covers of the fascicles; the original title was still the official one and was used everywhere else. The 125th and last fascicle covered words from Wise to the end of W and was published on 19 April 1928, and the full dictionary in bound volumes followed immediately. William Shakespeare is the most-quoted writer in the completed dictionary, with Hamlet his most-quoted work. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
8424-699: The project in ten years. Murray started the project, working in a corrugated iron outbuilding called the " Scriptorium " which was lined with wooden planks, bookshelves, and 1,029 pigeon-holes for the quotation slips. He tracked and regathered Furnivall's collection of quotation slips, which were found to concentrate on rare, interesting words rather than common usages. For instance, there were ten times as many quotations for abusion as for abuse . He appealed, through newspapers distributed to bookshops and libraries, for readers who would report "as many quotations as you can for ordinary words" and for words that were "rare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar or used in
8532-472: The project, which he did in 1885. Murray had his Scriptorium re-erected in the back garden of his new property. Murray resisted the second demand: that if he could not meet schedule, he must hire a second, senior editor to work in parallel to him, outside his supervision, on words from elsewhere in the alphabet. Murray did not want to share the work, feeling that he would accelerate his work pace with experience. That turned out not to be so, and Philip Gell of
8640-633: The quotations that the dictionary needed. As a result, he founded the Early English Text Society in 1864 and the Chaucer Society in 1868 to publish old manuscripts. Furnivall's preparatory efforts lasted 21 years and provided numerous texts for the use and enjoyment of the general public, as well as crucial sources for lexicographers, but they did not actually involve compiling a dictionary. Furnivall recruited more than 800 volunteers to read these texts and record quotations. While enthusiastic,
8748-439: The sanctity of private property, individual responsibility, faith in residential and social mobility, practicality, piety, public order and decorum, reverence for public education, activists, honest, and frugal government, town meeting democracy, and he believed that there was a public interest that transcends particular and stock ambitions. Regarding themselves as the elect and just in a world rife with sin and corruption, they felt
8856-399: The second supplement; Charles Talbut Onions turned 84 that year but was still able to make some contributions as well. The work on the supplement was expected to take about seven years. It actually took 29 years, by which time the new supplement (OEDS) had grown to four volumes, starting with A , H , O , and Sea . They were published in 1972, 1976, 1982, and 1986 respectively, bringing
8964-526: The start of the alphabet where the fascicles were decades old. The supplement included at least one word ( bondmaid ) accidentally omitted when its slips were misplaced; many words and senses newly coined (famously appendicitis , coined in 1886 and missing from the 1885 fascicle, which came to prominence when Edward VII 's 1902 appendicitis postponed his coronation ); and some previously excluded as too obscure (notoriously radium , omitted in 1903, months before its discoverers Pierre and Marie Curie won
9072-598: The term in The Devil's Dictionary as: "In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)" E. B. White humorously draws his own distinctions: To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner. To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander. To New Englanders,
9180-423: The textile and machine tools industries. After 1800, Yankees spearheaded most American reform movements, including those for the abolition of slavery, temperance in use of alcohol, increase in women's political rights, and improvement in women's education. Emma Willard and Mary Lyon pioneered in the higher education of women, while Yankees comprised most of the reformers who went South during Reconstruction in
9288-494: The time of the second edition's publication, meaning that thousands of words were marked as current despite no recent evidence of their use. Accordingly, it was recognized that work on a third edition would have to begin to rectify these problems. The first attempt to produce a new edition came with the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series, a new set of supplements to complement the OED2 with
9396-421: The turn of the 20th century. Yankee ingenuity was a worldwide stereotype of inventiveness, technical solutions to practical problems, "know-how," self-reliance, and individual enterprise. The stereotype first appeared in the 19th century. As Mitchell Wilson notes, "Yankee ingenuity and Yankee git-up-and-go did not exist in colonial days." The great majority of Yankees gravitated toward the burgeoning cities of
9504-483: The use of the term throughout the years has been the song "Yankee Doodle" which was popular during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). The song originated among the British troops during the French and Indian or Seven Years' War, creating a stereotype of the Yankee simpleton who stuck a feather in his cap and thought that he was stylish, but it was rapidly re-appropriated by American patriots after
9612-422: The user would have been for the entire dictionary to be re-edited and retypeset , with each change included in its proper alphabetical place; but this would have been the most expensive option, with perhaps 15 volumes required to be produced. The OUP chose a middle approach: combining the new material with the existing supplement to form a larger replacement supplement. Robert Burchfield was hired in 1957 to edit
9720-466: The volunteers were not well trained and often made inconsistent and arbitrary selections. Ultimately, Furnivall handed over nearly two tons of quotation slips and other materials to his successor. In the 1870s, Furnivall unsuccessfully attempted to recruit both Henry Sweet and Henry Nicol to succeed him. He then approached James Murray , who accepted the post of editor. In the late 1870s, Furnivall and Murray met with several publishers about publishing
9828-573: The word Yankee , but modern linguists generally reject theories that suggest it originated in any Indigenous languages. This includes a theory put forth by a British officer in 1789, who said that it was derived from the Cherokee word eankke meaning "coward"—despite the fact that no such word existed in the Cherokee language. Another theory surmised that the word was borrowed from the Wyandot pronunciation of
9936-467: The word in a neutral sense; the " Pennamite–Yankee War ", for example, was a series of clashes in 1769 over land titles in Pennsylvania between settlers from Connecticut Colony and "Pennamite" settlers from Pennsylvania . The meaning of Yankee has varied over time. In the 18th century, it referred to residents of New England descended from the original English settlers of the region. Mark Twain used
10044-757: The word in this sense the following century in his 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court . As early as the 1770s, British people applied the term to any person from the United States. In the 19th century, Americans in the southern United States employed the word in reference to Americans from the northern United States, though not to recent immigrants from Europe. Thus, a visitor to Richmond, Virginia , commented in 1818, "The enterprising people are mostly strangers; Scots, Irish, and especially New England men, or Yankees, as they are called". Historically, it has also been used to distinguish American-born Protestants from later immigrants, such as Catholics of Irish descent. Many etymologies have been suggested for
10152-518: The word to any American inhabiting the area north of the Mason–Dixon Line , though usually with a specific focus still on New England. New England Yankee might be used to differentiate. However, within New England itself, the term still refers more specifically to old-stock New Englanders of English descent. For example: Certainly the Irish have for years complained of Yankee discrimination against them. There were no civil rights groups then. Even
10260-423: The world. In 1857, work first began on the dictionary, though the first edition was not published In until 1884. It began to be published in unbound fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society . In 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary was first used unofficially on
10368-577: Was "used as a nickname for a Dutch-speaking American in colonial times" and could have grown to include non-Dutch colonists, as well. The Oxford English Dictionary calls this theory "perhaps the most plausible". Alternatively, the Dutch given names Jan ( Dutch: [jɑn] ) and Kees ( Dutch: [keːs] ) have long been common, and the two are sometimes combined into a single name (Jan Kees). Its Anglicized spelling Yankee could, in this way, have been used to mock Dutch colonists. The chosen name Jan Kees may have been partly inspired by
10476-462: Was a Yale University-trained surgeon and a military officer in the American Civil War who had been confined to Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane after killing a man in London. He invented his own quotation-tracking system, allowing him to submit slips on specific words in response to editors' requests. The story of how Murray and Minor worked together to advance the OED was retold in
10584-597: Was applied by Confederates to soldiers of the Union army in general. Elsewhere in the United States, it largely refers to people from the Northeastern states , but especially those with New England cultural ties, such as descendants of colonial New England settlers, wherever they live. Its sense is sometimes more cultural than geographical, emphasizing the Calvinist Puritan Christian beliefs and traditions of
10692-419: Was called for, and for this reason it was decided to embark on a new, complete revision of the dictionary. Beginning with the launch of the first OED Online site in 2000, the editors of the dictionary began a major revision project to create a completely revised third edition of the dictionary ( OED3 ), expected to be completed in 2037 at a projected cost of about £ 34 million. Revisions were started at
10800-431: Was completed, it was clear that the full text of the dictionary would need to be computerized. Achieving this would require retyping it once, but thereafter it would always be accessible for computer searching—as well as for whatever new editions of the dictionary might be desired, starting with an integration of the supplementary volumes and the main text. Preparation for this process began in 1983, and editorial work started
10908-468: Was developed by Thomas Chandler Haliburton , and it grew between 1836 and 1844 in a series of publications. The damned Yankee usage dates from 1812. Confederates popularized it as a derogatory term for their Northern enemies during and after the American Civil War (1861–1865). Rhode Island Governor Bruce Sundlun had been a pilot in World War II, and he named his B-17F bomber Damn Yankee because
11016-409: Was estimated from a sample calculation to amount to 17% of the foreign loan words and words from regional forms of English. Some of these had only a single recorded usage, but many had multiple recorded citations, and it ran against what was thought to be the established OED editorial practice and a perception that he had opened up the dictionary to "World English". By the time the new supplement
11124-553: Was first settled by European colonists from the Mayflower as part of the Plymouth Company in 1620. The region has seen many different waves of immigration since 1620, creating a unique and diverse culture. New Englanders have played a prominent role in the colonial and modern history of the United States, from political dynasties to influential artists and writers. Famous for their distinct dialect and attitude, New Englanders hold
11232-459: Was mention of a pirate named Dutch Yanky in the 17th century. The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (1760) contains the passage, "Haul forward thy chair again, take thy berth, and proceed with thy story in a direct course, without yawing like a Dutch yanky." According to this theory, Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam started using the term against the English colonists of neighboring Connecticut. British General James Wolfe made
11340-593: Was never a tribe called the Yankoos . The original Yankees diffused widely across the northern United States, leaving their imprints in New York, the Upper Midwest , many taking advantage of water routes by the Great Lakes , and places as far away as Seattle , San Francisco , and Honolulu . Yankeeism is the general character of the Union. Yankee manners are as migratory as Yankee men. The latter are found everywhere and
11448-448: Was not a list of unregistered words; instead, it was the study On Some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries , which identified seven distinct shortcomings in contemporary dictionaries: The society ultimately realized that the number of unlisted words would be far more than the number of words in the English dictionaries of the 19th century, and shifted their idea from covering only words that were not already in English dictionaries to
11556-479: Was printed in 20 volumes, comprising 291,500 entries in 21,730 pages. The longest entry in the OED2 was for the verb set , which required 60,000 words to describe some 580 senses (430 for the bare verb, the rest in phrasal verbs and idioms). As entries began to be revised for the OED3 in sequence starting from M, the record was progressively broken by the verbs make in 2000, then put in 2007, then run in 2011 with 645 senses. Despite its considerable size,
11664-580: Was reached; both the Cambridge University Press and the Oxford University Press were approached. The OUP finally agreed in 1879 (after two years of negotiating by Sweet, Furnivall, and Murray) to publish the dictionary and to pay Murray, who was both the editor and the Philological Society president. The dictionary was to be published as interval fascicles, with the final form in four volumes, totalling 6,400 pages. They hoped to finish
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