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Glite Dictionary
🇺🇸 Insult for Northerner 😠 Angry exclamation ⚾ Insult for fan
damn Yankee

damn Yankee

1 9.9
A rude exclamation showing anger at someone from the northern United States
  • idiom
  • /dæm ˈjæŋki/
  • Slur
translation icon : maldito yanqui
  • That damn Yankee thinks he can tell us how to live our lives.

Examples

  • Get that damn Yankee out of our yard.

    Pharaoh's Army (1995)

  • I can't believe that damn Yankee just cut in front of me in line.

  • Whenever I see that damn Yankee, it just makes my blood boil.

Synonyms

fuck you
vsdamn Yankee
  • Offensive
441 9.9

A rude word said to show anger or insult someone

targets people from a specific northern region rather than anyone generally

Surface Forms

damn Yankee main

Morphology

damn + Yankee

This phrase is compositionally transparent: 'damn' conveys anger/pejoration and 'Yankee' denotes a person from the US North, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer it is an insulting reference to a Northerner. The pattern (pejorative + demonym) is common across languages and there is no strong idiomatic shift or metaphorical meaning to block comprehension.

Etymology

The exclamation damn Yankee comes from adding the curse 'damn' to Yankee, a name for people from the American North. During the Civil War and after, Southerners used this strong phrase to show anger or dislike at a Northerner, so it became an angry 'exclamation'.