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

damn Yankee

1 9.9
An insulting name used by southerners for a person from the northern United States
  • noun
  • /dæm ˈjæŋki/
  • Slur
translation icon : maldito yanqui
  • Someone actually yelled "Damn Yankee" at me.

Examples

  • "Of course, remembering it when those damn Yankees are shooting at us might take a bit of doing."

    Fiction book (1992)

  • It's such a shame Captain Polk was a damn Yankee.

    Blue Hawaii (1961)

  • Well, somebody better go tell the damn Yankees.

    American Outlaws (2001)

  • Give those damn Yankees hell!

    Fiction book (1992)

  • A lot of damn Yankees will leave, but you'll get a lot of independent types to join you.

    Blog text (24)

  • Her mixed in with their damn Yankee kin.

    Pharaoh's Army (1995)

  • By God, there's another good man the damn Yankees didn't get!

    Sommersby (1993)

  • What I need to know and tell my folks back home is: When are you going to do something... ...about that damn Yankee blockade out there on the water?

    Gettysburg (1993)

  • Damn Yankee!

    A Time for Killing (1967)

  • During the Civil War, many Southerners referred to the Union soldiers as damn Yankees with great hostility.

Synonyms

Yank
vsdamn Yankee
  • Archaic
1 8.8

A person from the northern United States, especially during the Civil War

is a hostile Southern insult for those people expressing anger or contempt

Surface Forms

damn Yankee singular
damn Yankees plural

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 noun damn Yankee comes from old fights between the North and the South in the United States, when Southerners called Union soldiers and other northerners Yankees and added 'damn' to show strong hate. That's why it became a mean 'word' for a person from the North.