Yankees; was Re: FRIGIDAIRE and KLEENEX (was ICE BOX)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 19:35:26 -0500, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

>At 2:51 PM -0600 3/1/05, Barbara Need wrote:
>>>Or that a
>>>Yankee is anyone from the U.S., or more specifically someone from the
>>>northern states, or more specifically someone from New England, or...?
>>
>>What is the or here (leaving aside the baseball team, which is, after
>>all, not a subset of people from New England)?
>>
>No, the baseball team "Yankee" (or the defunct pro football team) is
>a different item.  The more specific values of "Yankee" I had in mind
>involve contexts in which, say, JFK didn't count as a Yankee because
>he was Irish--"real" Yankees are WASPs.  ("Yankee" is standardly used
>in the context of Boston and Massachusetts politics in this way.)

See also the classic sociological study of "Yankee City" by Lloyd Warner
and Leo Srole, in which the population of Newburyport, Mass. is divided
between "Yankees" (WASPs) and "ethnics" (Jews, Irish, Italians, what have
you).


--Ben Zimmer