[Ads-l] Antedating of "Redneck" (Term for Poor Rural White Persons)

[Shapiro, Fred]

redneck (OED 1891, Green 1895 [15 Sept.])

1880 Boonville (Indiana) 7 Aug. 1/5 (Newspapers.com)  The Standard calls the old Democrats of Hart township "old red necks."

1885 Cincinnati Enquirer 6 June 1/1 (Newspapers.com)  As late as 1885 a history of Kentucky went outside of its scope and purpose to show that "A land company imported in the seventeenth century to the waters of the Pimlico and Albemarle Sounds the worst, by far the worst, population of any brought to America, from whom have come the sand-hillers, crackers, dirt-eaters, red-necks, &c., of the South.

NOTE:  The OED has an 1830 citation, but this is a narrow term for Presbyterians and should at most be presented in square brackets.

Fred Shapiro




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