[Ads-l] "Peckerhead" (antedating, 1932-1938)

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

I'm trying to reconcile finding a few examples of "peckerhead(s)" in mostly
small-town newspapers in the 1930s (see far below) with OED's entry for the
word.

OED has for "peckerhead" "[a]n aggressive, objectionable person; a fool, an
idiot" and holds (as others do) that it derives from "pecker [penis]" +
"head." (I suppose this compares with “dickhead” and related uses of “dick”
and “prick.”) I have no issue with that definition; it's the etymology
that's now puzzling to me.

The earliest example that OED shares dates to 1945. These instances of
"peckerhead [romanticism]" that Ginsberg and Kerouac traded in private
letters may convey "foolish" or "aggressive," but they may also slyly play
on sexuality, so maybe a link to "pecker [penis]" + "head" could work, at
least for now.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Jack_Kerouac_and_Allen_Ginsberg/N5FN49R58-gC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22peckerhead%22

But OED's second example for "peckerhead" (1955), when set in context,
doesn't completely track. It comes from a TIME magazine review of a movie
deemed "a rather unnerving spectacle in which the contemporary South looked
like a magnolia tundra strewn with discarded Coke bottles" (I love that;
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,823994,00.html).

The relevant usage is: "When the girl's husband (Cameron Mitchell), a
got-rich peckerhead, finds out about that hotel visit, he ravishes his
wife, just to even the score."

Maybe "pecker [penis]" + "head," in the context of rape, but maybe
something else.

It seems improbable to me that "peckerhead" would've appeared in
the popular press in the '30s (see examples far below) had it been based on
this taboo etymology.

A few of these '30s uses reflect OED's definition for "peckerhead," but at
least one seems to be edging toward "peckerwood," in the sense of "[a]
white person, esp. a white person regarded as poor, rustic, or
unsophisticated" (OED, n.2.) and "[s]mall, poor, inferior; (also) of,
relating to, or characteristic of the (poor white) population of the
Southern states of America" (OED, adj.). DARE's lengthy and helpful entry
for "peckerwood" gives "[a] poor, backward, rural White person."

The use of "peckerwood" as a class descriptor goes back to ca. 1870 and
appears to be based on "peckerwood" employed earlier in the South for
"woodpecker." (I should note that some early human peckerwoods that I've
located in 19th-c texts are described as having red hair.)

Importantly, DARE has for "peckerhead, "1 A woodpecker" and "2 A
disparaging term for a person" and cites, among other things, Pederson's
_Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States: Concordance_ (1986), which points at
a relationship between the disparaging terms "peckerwood" and "peckerhead"
and stresses "thickheaded," "stupid," and unsophisticated for the latter.

I think it's certainly possible that Ginzberg and Kerouac were familiar
with this older "penis-less" form of "peckerhead." Two slightly earlier
letters that they had traded mention that "[t]he Thomas Wolfish reaction to
all this, of romantic disapproved [sic] and fiery rejection, doesn't
particularly interest me" (Ginsberg) and "[n]ever would you subscribe to
'Thomas Wolfish fiery rejection and romantic disapproval.' It pains me, my
friend, it pains me" (Kerouac).

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Jack_Kerouac_and_Allen_Ginsberg/N5FN49R58-gC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=wolfish

My guess is that Ginzberg's reference to "peckerhead romanticism" was
primarily based on his early reference to Thomas Wolfe (as representative
of a class or type known as "peckerheads," as aggressive, foolish, and
unsophisticated) and not so much on a derivation involving penises.

If any of this is correct, OED's entry should be amended to reflect an
older "peckerhead," with a kinship to "peckerwood," and a newer
"peckerhead," with a basis in "pecker [penis]" + "head."

(I mean, the other explanation, of course, is that "peckerhead" has no
relationship to "peckerwood" and that an origin involving penises was very
old by the 1930s.)

-- Bonnie

-----------------------------------------

It's a good idea to study for yourself whom you wish to support and not let
some peckerhead get you off the right track by propaganda that Smith or
Jones is running way ahead of his opponent in the north end, or the south
end, or the east or west side of the county. [The Enterprise-Courier
(Charleston, Missouri), 16 June 1932, p. 4,
https://www.newspapers.com/article/enterprise-courier-peckerwood-61632/149831854/.
"Peckerhead" appeared in the same newspaper a couple of times the following
year, too:
https://www.newspapers.com/article/enterprise-courier-peckerhead-41333/149832165/
,
https://www.newspapers.com/article/enterprise-courier-peckerhead-62633/149832259/
.]

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One is that greatly mooted and far from settled question the obligations
and duties between owner and tenant, in this case between the cotton
planters and the poor peckerheads who till their soil. [Richard C.
Holderness, "Stars in New Film of South; Problems of Planters and Tenants
Are Aired in Picture," The Denver Post, 14 November 1932,
https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2%3A12C7581AC4BD0728%40GB3NEWS-1711E6BD1EC044B1%402427026-170FD93FEA890DCE%4011-170FD93FEA890DCE?clipid=gamtklwiqcjiaqlkncyyaklrcyhxoycl_ip-10-166-46-155_1719096894698
.]

------------------

Tell your pals around the service station what you've learned about
astronomy and think up some good ones to pull on those peckerheads who
can't tell the difference between an electric light and a celestial body.
["Evening Star Is Over Pittsburgh," The Record American (Mahanoy City,
Pennsylvania), 9 July 1938, p. 4,
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-record-american-peckerhead-7938/149832338/
.]

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