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

Mon Jul 8 19:41:53 UTC 2024

1949 V.O. Key _Southern Politics in State and Nation_ (N. Y.: Knopf) 231:
The [Mississippi] “redneck,” “peckerwood,” or “peckerhead” inhabits another
world. His “hills” — the highest altitude is around 700 feet — run from the
northern end of the state and occupy roughly its eastern half, broadening
out almost to the River in the south and petering out in the pine forests
of the coastal region.

HDAS III would have had a bunch of these. I discern two overlapping
meanings: 1. fool. 2. "redneck."  1 is from "pecker," 2 is from
"peckerwood," prob. infl. by "pecker."

I doubt that TIME would have printed the word in 1955 if the editors had
been familiar with the (secondary?) "dickhead" sense.

JL

On Mon, Jul 8, 2024 at 1:58 PM Bonnie Taylor-Blake <b.taylorblake at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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/
> .]
>
> ------------------
>
> 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/
> .]
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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