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Yankee   /jˈæŋki/   Listen
Yankee

adjective
1.
Used by Southerners for an inhabitant of a northern state in the United States (especially a Union soldier).



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"Yankee" Quotes from Famous Books



... "If the Yankee doesn't take it, what do you say to you and me setting up here when we get spliced?" the draper's assistant asked his sweetheart. And she said: "Oh, Reggie, how can you! ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... the druggist to mix into each pill a pound of good old Yankee ginger," wound up Prescott. "Take four, an hour apart ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... amputated stump of a man's fingers, or the new tail of a lizard. By the way, I saw somewhere during the last week or so a statement of a man rearing from the same set of eggs winged and wingless aphides, which seemed new to me. Does not some Yankee say that the American viviparous aphides are winged? I am particularly glad that you are ruminating on the act of fertilisation: it has long seemed to me the most wonderful and curious of physiological problems. I have often and often speculated ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... didn't learn to read and write, not 'till freedom come when a school started there by a Yankee named Backinstore. Later, our church and Sunday ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... element from his blood, nor the belief in fairies from his soul. The Celtic nature is a fast dye, and Mr Button's nature was such that though he had been shanghaied by Larry Marr in 'Frisco, though he had got drunk in most ports of the world, though he had sailed with Yankee captains and been man-handled by Yankee mates, he still carried his fairies about with him—they, and a very large stock of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... thoughtfully, "it would take a wider garment of love to cover a man with a carpetbag in his hand than a soldier in a Yankee uniform. A conqueror who looked around as he was fighting and then came back to trade on the necessities of the conquered cuts but a sorry figure, Matilda, but ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... soldiers came. I think they were Yankee soldiers. De never hurt anybody but they took what they could find to eat and they made us cook for them. I remebers that me and some other lil gals had a play house, but when they came nigh I got skeered. I just ducked through a hole in the fence and ran out in the field. One ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... people. Nearly everything tends among this class to deteriorate general health, and, since their numbers have within the last decade greatly increased, the influence on the country must be markedly detrimental, and, but for the steady flow of vitalizing blood from the Old World, the whole Yankee race would ere ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... bought a house in Hempstead, expecting to remain there; and in the household, as in business, he gave rein to his ardent and versatile inventive faculty. One of his domestic contrivances rocked the cradle, fanned away the flies, and played a lullaby to the baby. He sold the patent in Connecticut to a Yankee peddler for a horse and wagon, and the peddler's stock, including a hurdy-gurdy. Another invention was a machine for mowing grass, constructed on the principle ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond

... bullock-team hauling a waggon load of bales blundered slowly along the road, the weary cattle swinging from side to side under the lash of the bullocky, who yelled hoarse profanity with the volubility of an auctioneer and the vocabulary of a Yankee skipper unchecked by authority. A little further on another team, drawn up before a hotel, lay sprawling, half buried, the patient bullocks twisted into painful angles by reason of their yokes, quietly chewing the cud. Riders and drivers conformed to no rule of the road, and maintained a headlong ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... mind impossible, of the great "concealed poet" "of high position," who can "bring out original plays of his own," and yet "takes the works of others," say of "sporting Kyd," or of Dekker and Chettle, and such poor devils,— TAKES them as a Yankee pirate-publisher takes my ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... invader. So—perished Albion's "glammarye," With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping, His charmed torch beside his knee, That even the dead himself might see The magic scroll within his keeping. And now our modern Yankee sees Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries; And naught above, below, around, Of life or death, of sight or sound, Whate'er its nature, form, or look, Excites his terror or surprise, All seeming to his knowing eyes Familiar as his "catechise," Or ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... suspicions had fallen on their being conspirators and rebels from the colonies, and that they were great officers and Tories in disguise; some said that one was General Washington, and others that it was only three members of the Yankee parliament, come over to get our good old English fashions to set themselves ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... girlish figure darted through the crowd and clasped Mr. Jocelyn. He looked down and recognized his daughter Mildred. For a moment he seemed a little sobered, and then the demon within him reasserted itself. "Get out of my way!" he shouted. "I'll teach that infernal Yankee to insult a Southern officer and gentleman. Let me go," he said furiously, "or I'll throw you down the stairway," but Mildred clung to him with her whole weight, and the men now from very shame rushed ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... centre of interest among all the women in the room. She always dressed in velvet. No woman in Canada, has she but the faintest dash of native blood in her veins, but loves velvets and silks. As beef to the Englishman, wine to the Frenchman, fads to the Yankee, so are velvet and silk to the Indian girl, be she wild as prairie grass, be she on the borders of civilization, or, having stepped within its boundary, mounted the steps of culture ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... obstinacy which had sustained him from the day of his arrest, gave way, and to the minister who edited upon him, he made a full confession of his having been sent to Mississippi as a spy for Sherman, and that he had already supplied that yankee General with valuable information of the strength and capacity of Vicksburg for resistance. He was very much humiliated at being condemned to death by hanging and made application for the sentence to ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... that easily, and if you wanted a green-house on the north side it would only be necessary to set up a few looking-glasses to pour a blazing sun upon it all day long. You might need a little clockwork to keep them adjusted at the right angles, but Yankee invention ought to be equal to that. I have no doubt we shall see patent sunshine-distributors in the market very shortly if your idea gets abroad; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised to hear that a company proposed to set up mammoth reflectors to keep the sun from setting ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... morning calls and evening parties. They are all religious, but hate the churches; they reject all the ways of living of other men, but have none to offer in their stead. Perhaps, one of these days, a great Yankee shall come, who will easily ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... end to that squall all the time we're up here," Ethan went on to say, with a pretended look of disgust on his thin Yankee face. "Whenever you do get a thing on your mind, X-Ray, you sure beat all creation to keep yawping about it. Forget that you ever picked up the fifty, and let's be thinking only of the royal good times we're ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... shudderingly recollect how nearly the little Guernsey steamer was run over by an American man-of-war in the Channel, because a tipsy captain would "cross the bows of that d—— d Yankee:"—the huge black prow positively hung over us,—and it was a miracle that we were not sunk bodily in the mighty waters. What more? Well, I will here insert an escaped danger that tells its own tale in a sonnet written at the time, the place being Tenby and the sea-anemone ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Guzman's murder was not lacking, for it was generally known that President Potosi had long resented Yankee enmity, particularly as that enmity was directed at him personally. A succession of irritating diplomatic skirmishes, an unsatisfactory series of verbal sparring matches, had roused the old Indian's anger, and it was considered likely that he had adopted this means of permanently severing ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... they wrote themselves. Nobody was ever less of a humorist than Andrew Jackson, and it was therefore the more essential that he should be the cause of humor in others. It was simply inevitable that during his progresses through the country there should be some amusing shadow evoked, some Yankee parody of the man, such as came from two or three quarters under the name of Jack Downing. The various records of Monroe's famous tours are as tame as the speeches which these expeditions brought forth, and John ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... back to the house, just as dawn was breaking, and Mr Parmenter had shaken hands with Hiram Roker, a long, lean, slab-sided Yankee, who was Hingeston's head engineer and general manager, and had fought the grim fight through failure to success at his side for twenty years, he ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... greeting just now showed that Bell suspected nothing, because he had shaken hands in the heartiest manner possible. And as for Miss Lee, she was no more than a smart Yankee girl, and absolutely ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... husbandmen. They are mostly dairy-farmers, poultrymen, sheep breeders. The Russian Jew will not in this generation be fit for what might be called long-range farming. He needs crops that turn his money over quickly. With that in sight, he works hard and faithfully. The Yankee, as a rule, welcomes him. He has the sagacity to see that his coming will improve economic conditions, now none too good. As shrewd traders, the two are well matched. The public school brings the children together on equal terms, levelling out ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... sound good to hear ye talk good Yankee talk, Phoebe," she said. "Ye hevn't dropped yer play-actin' lingo fer ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... right in the heart of Yankee Land, the first significant move to supplant foreign labor with native labor, a step which has resulted in one of the biggest upheavals in the North incident to the European war, which has already been a boon to the colored American, improving his economic status ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... temperature considerable. Yes, sir, I reckon we sent a good many of ye over to old mortuis nisi bonum. Look at Antietam and Bull Run and Seven Pines and around Nashville! There never was a battle where we didn't lick ye unless you was ten to our one. I knew you were a blame Yankee the minute ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... Some were armed with rifles, some with blunderbusses, some with spears and hay-forks. None wore uniform. As we halted to watch the pathetic array, their fifer and drummer wheeled out and marched down the line, playing Yankee Doodle. Then the minister laid down his blunderbuss and, facing the company, raised his arms in prayer, invoking the "God of Armies" as though he addressed his supplication before ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... me not of joy,—a hum! Now the British Sparrow's come. Sent first was he Across the sea, Advisers kind did flatter me, When he winged way o'er Yankee soil, My caterpillar swarms he'd spoil; And oh, how pleasant ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various

... won't reach the village I'm thinking of for a hundred years; and then they'll play it until the very birds lose heart, and think they are uncannily up to date. So they are if you count it when things come round the second time. I told him if the organ seemed to be playing 'Yankee Doodle,' I supposed it was because it felt like it; as, for twenty-five years, it had more or less pleased itself at my expense. "But he'll be a gargoyle soon, and then he won't notice, and it will boom ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... one can easily conceive of its popularity in the London Clubs.... The 'American,' so familiar to British readers, during the first half of the century, through the eyes of such travellers as Mrs. Trollope, now becomes the 'Yankee,' and is located north of Mason and ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... the Yankee, looking at him with more admiration than he expected ever to entertain for a Frenchman. "There's five ton of cheeses that have been seven voyages, and a hundred firkins of Irish butter, and five-and-thirty cases ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... enough of my maunderings. But before I conclude them, may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to express our admiration for the Yankee Idyl. I am afraid of using too extravagant language if I say all I think about it. Was there ever anything more stinging, more concentrated, more vigorous, more just? He has condensed into those few pages the essence ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... passages are duplicated from the Essays. At least two out of every three are characteristic of Hazlitt: not one in any twenty is not well worth reading and, if occasion served, commenting on. They are, indeed, as far from being consecutive as (according to the Yankee) was the conversation of Edgar Poe; and the multitude and diversity of their subjects fit them better for occasional than for continuous reading.[13] Perhaps, if any single volume deserves to be recommended to a beginner in Hazlitt it had better be The Plain Speaker, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... to coordinate Latin America as a source of raw materials and a market for manufactures and investment capital have not produced a United Latin American front against a common Yankee menace, but a sturdy refusal even of the tiniest Latin American Republic to surrender or limit its sovereignty has pushed a thorn into the vulnerable side of Washington's Monroe Doctrine control of the ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... his chair. Eventually this assumed the time and accent of some air. Then he began to whistle softly and hesitatingly, as if trying to recall a forgotten tune. Finally this took shape in a rude resemblance, not unlike that which his flag bore to the national standard, to Yankee ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... that this law is strictly enforced. The secrets of their trade are accordingly jealously guarded by the natives, especially from the English. The gentlemen had therefore to disguise themselves as much as possible, one pretending to be a rich Yankee, who had purchased large estates between Santos and San Paulo, which he had determined to work with slave instead of coolie labour. He was supposed to have come to Rio to select some slaves, but would be obliged to see and consult his partner before ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... rushed downward the earth seemed as if rising to meet them. Just at the right second Tom Raymond, by a skillful flirt of his hand, brought the Yankee fighting aircraft back to an even keel, with a ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... returned. "I was wondering if you Canadian boys are way ahead of us Yankee boys when it comes to doing as you please. My father wouldn't let me come on this trip if Mr. Perry hadn't ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield

... according to the real amount of weight they and their errand have? OR, English to have their ears torn off; and imperious French-Spanish Bourbons, grounding on extinct Pope's-meridians, GLOIRE and other imaginary bases, to take command?" The incalculable Yankee Nations, shall they be in effect YANGKEE ("English" with a difference), or FRANGCEE ("French" with a difference)? A Question not to be closed by Diplomatic putty, try ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... reference to the date when it came into service. De Vinne, in his "Typographia," published in 1876, says that ink-balls were in use here "fifty years ago," or in 1826; but it must have been only in isolated and out-of-the-way rural printing offices, for it can hardly be supposed that Yankee "go-aheadativeness" would have failed to recognize at once the importance of the discovery, or have long delayed its general adoption, although the hand press, with many improvements, remained the universal printing machine in the United States until 1822, when ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... part of the year he affected a soft white collar with a permanent bow tie. The leanness of his features, and his crooked neck with the prominent Adam's apple which stirred when he spoke, suggested a Yankee ancestry, but the faded blue eyes, pathetically misted, could only ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... this humanitarianism in which we are entangled asserts itself where, by all guidebook laws, it should not. When I take up my pen to write to you, I am thinking more of a white-moustached old Yankee at an hotel than about the things I have seen within the same 24 hours: the frescoes of Santa Croce, the illuminations of St. Marco; the white marbles of the tower of Giotto; the very Madonnas of Raphael, the very David of Michael Angelo. Throughout this tour, in pursuance of our theory of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... with occupants of the orchestra and pit. There is much applause when the comic man shuffles through the charinga—a popular negro dance, difficult of performance, and shouts of laughter are produced in the scene between a Yankee, who speaks very broken Spanish, and a lady who speaks Spanish with the approved Cuban accent. It is an enthusiastic and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... mighty nations in the east or in the west, Our glorious Yankee nation is the brightest and the best; We have room for all creation, and our banner is unfurled With a cordial invitation to the people of the world. So, come along, come along; make no delay; Come from every nation; ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... Australian colonies from Port Townsend in Puget Sound; and Masters, now recovering from the terrible shock he had received, went on board and asked the captain to let him work his passage. But the Yankee skipper of the lumber ship did not seem to like the idea of having to feed such a hollow-eyed, gaunt-looking being for another six weeks or so, and refused his request. And so Masters, in a dulled, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... who was in command of Little Slave, made us welcome, introducing us ensemble to his friend, a former H.B. factor, to the Yankee who was looking for a timber limit, to the "Literary Cuss," as he called the young man in corduroys and a wide white hat, who was endeavoring to get past "tradition," that has damned this Dominion both in fiction and in fact for two hundred years, and do something that had in it the real ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... on the sixth overtook Tatpan and his herdsmen. Tatpan, like Sokwenna's foster-children, Keok and Nawadlook, had a quarter-strain of white in him, and when Alan came up to him in the edge of the valley where the deer were grazing, he was lying on a rock, playing Yankee Doodle on a mouth-organ. It was Tatpan who told him that an hour or two before an exhausted stranger had come into camp, looking for him, and that the man was asleep now, apparently more dead than alive, but had given instructions to be awakened ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... these pictures being of any value in the careers of their authors. But once you sat on the rocks of Maine, and watched the climbing of the surf up the morning sky after a heavy storm at sea, you realize the force of Homer's gift for the realities. His pictures are yankee in their indications, as a work of art could be, flinty and unyielding, resolute as is the yankee nature itself, or rather to say, the original yankee, which was pioneer then in a so rough yet resourceful country. It is the quality of Thoreau, but without ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... burning words a story of Yankee bravery, and true love that thrills from beginning to end, with the spirit of the Revolution. The heart beats quickly, and we feel ourselves taking a part in the exciting scenes described. The whole story is so absorbing that you will sit up far into the night to finish it. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... I have a thrifty streak, and I hated to see a property like Ridge House lie fallow. It's great. The buying of Blowing Rock was pure Yankee sense of a bargain. But you see how it all works out. You'll have the time of your life developing your holdings and, at odd moments, I can start my shack. Look upon the change as an adventure—nothing permanent. In a year or so you may be able to spend most of the time on ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... piratical-looking schooners, have considerably more interest to us, however," said Adair; "they are not employed in any honest calling, depend on that; and there lie two Spaniards and a Yankee. If they have no slaves on board, they will have before long, and we must do our best to catch them. We must depend on our own wits, though, for it's impossible to get any correct information from the Portuguese officers—they are most of them as ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... know a few things in a worldly way, I trust will not be denied. George Peabody, the Yankee, adopted the methods of the Chosen People. And at that early date, it comes to us as a bit of a miracle that George Peabody said, "You can't afford to sell anybody anything which he does not need, nor can you afford to sell it at a price beyond what it is worth." Also this, "When I sell a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... forget the admiration elicited by Lord Elgin's beautiful speech on that occasion. Upon the American visitors (who, it must be confessed, do not look for the highest order of intellect in the appointees of the Crown) the effect was amusing. A sterling Yankee friend, while the Governor was speaking, sat by my side, who occasionally gave vent to his feelings as the speech progressed, each sentence increasing in beauty and eloquence, by such approving exclamations as "He's a glorious fellow! He ought to be ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... smoking room was a tall, slim, Yankee-looking sort of a man, who smoked in a nervous way, and when he talked seemed to speak with great earnestness. He was introduced as Mr. Rockwell, a cutlery manufacturer of Meriden, Conn. Somehow these Meriden men are all ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... Nathan, drawing a deep, pleasant breath, "you must have a dancing tune or so, Yankee Doodle, Money-Musk, and ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... glowed with ardor—at any rate he took it to be ardor, although it might have been the fever from that summer rash which so afflicted him— and his heart fluttered in a way dangerous to one of his apoplectic tendencies. To be sure, he had met Rosa only twice since her return from her Yankee school, but twice had been enough; with prompt decision he had resolved to do her the honor ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... vessels and the whalers about forty. Thousands of citizens living along the seashore and the rivers fished more or less to add to the local food supply. The deep-sea fishermen exported a part of their catch, dried and salted. Yankee vessels sailed to all ports of the world and carried the greater part of the foreign commerce of the United States. Flour, tobacco, rice, wheat, corn, dried fish, potash, indigo, and staves were the principal exports. ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... native gentleman, who had just returned with an independence from India, the larger portion of which he unfortunately had with him in gold and jewels, of which, as may be supposed, the American privateer relieved him. In later years another American privateer, "the true-blooded Yankee," captured a considerable number of merchant vessels at anchor ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... the place over from a New Englander, who had made his pile by running the lumbering business up here and a saw-mill down in the valley at the same time. The place seemed dog-cheap at the time; but after a while it began to dawn upon Hewson that the Yankee had the better of the deal. Eucalyptus had not come up to early promise. In fact, it was slipping back and down the hill with a run. Already five out of its seven big saw-mills were idle and rotting. Its original architect had sunk ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... dat you got wid you? It ain't one of dem Yankee ladies, is it?" For, I am sorry to say, John Cotton did not approve of the ladies in question, and was afraid I would "disgrace de family" if I married one of them. Before I could answer I heard a glad little cry, and ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... him, pard. I'm not for draggin' him down that passage. Grab hold there,—you! Hey, get his feet, damn you!" The third man was reluctant to understand, but at last grasped the prisoner by the feet, swearing in a language of his own. The Yankee desperado took his shoulders, and together, with earnest grunts, they followed the man with the lantern, Truxton knew not whither except that it was ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... pinned on, which reached from the knees, into the mouth of the moccasins.—Around her toes only she had some rags, and over these her buckskin moccasins. Her gown was of undressed flannel, colored brown. It was made in old yankee style, with long sleeves, covered the top of the hips, and was tied before in two places with strings of deer skin. Over all this, she wore an Indian blanket. On her head she wore a piece of old brown woollen cloth made somewhat like a ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... dug-outs to now, repeating in their patient hewing the history of the Western Reserve.... In one generation or even in one decade they emerge from the desolation of being foreigners. They, and the Germans, pay Yankee mortgages with blood and sweat. They swiftly master politics, voting for honesty rather than for hand-shakes; they make keen, scrupulously honest business deals; send their children to school; accumulate ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... or small, and regardless of its intrinsic value. As gold and silver were paid for the articles brought by the traders, they were also required to pay a heavy duty on the precious metals they took out of the country. Yankee ingenuity, however, evaded much of these unjust taxes. When the caravan approached Santa Fe, the freight of three wagons was transferred to one, and the empty vehicles destroyed by fire; while to avoid paying the export duty on gold and silver, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... of his winter passages to Europe he found the sailors suffering extremely from handling frozen ropes, as they were not provided with mittens. Being a Yankee, and having been brought up to do things as well as read about them, he took one of his thick overcoats and made with his own hands a pair of mittens for ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... residence of a wealthy cacao planter, in order to sell him some merchandise; for which purpose the canoe was unloaded, and the bales were opened out for his inspection. Most of these planters were Brazilians, a few were Yankee adventurers, and one or two were Scotch and English; but nearly all had married Brazilian ladies, who, with their daughters, proved good customers to the old trader. Some of these ladies were extremely "purty craturs," as Barney expressed it; but most of them were ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... manifested in flint (Yankee) corn, as it was called by people of the West and South, and many samples were given to people from all parts of the United States and to ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... last forever. I hope we will have some national songs presently besides the ridiculous 'Yankee Doodle.' It doesn't seem quite so bad when it is played by the band and men ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... that this was a salvo put in for pride. The Yankee girl would not appear anxious for a servile situation. All the while the conversation went on, she sat tilting herself gently back and forth in the rocking-chair, with a lazy touching of her toes to the floor. Her very vis inertiae ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... ever forget that girl in Yankee-land?" she said. "She ain't here, is she, and why shouldn't you steal a little harmless fun? There's men who'd give their little finger to win a kiss from me—and you sit there so glum and solemn, who could have a bushel ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... licks at the Republican party and the nigger-lovers of the North, an' wound up by sayin' that the late lamented had been a stanch Democrat an' worked at the poles as hard to overthrow graftin' and Yankee oppression as any man in the fair Southland. He got through somehow, but, betwixt me 'n you, Alf, I don't think Hettie thought she got her full money's worth, for she was countin' on a wonderful display of poetry and highfalutin' ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... courtship and marriage, has undergone several important changes with the advent of "democracy" and the "mechanical age." Time was when travel was indulged in only by the better classes of society and the rules of travellers' etiquette were well defined and acknowledged by all. But Yankee ingenuity has indeed brought the "mountain to Mahomet"; the "iron horse" and the "Pullman coach" have, I believe, come to stay, bringing with them many new customs and manners for the well-bred gentleman or lady who would ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... the best o' them a'! There wes saxty or siventy bairns went to his school at Carnavruick when I wes a loon. He'd been to Ameriky, ye ken, sir, and I doot he'd brought back wi' him a bit o' the Yankee tongue. Faix! He had a lively tongue! He niver wanted his answer when he had to come oot ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... sons. An older brother who outlived him a short time, was the Rev. Robert Traill Spence Lowell, who wrote besides a novel, The New Priest in Conception Bay, which contains a delightful study of a Yankee, some poems, and ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... were surprised when at supper time Sylvia demanded to know what a "Yankee" was. She thought her mother looked a little troubled. But her father smiled. "Yankee is what Britishers call ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis

... exceedingly gratifying to hear from all sides these and other similar encomiums of the American missionaries, and it makes a Yankee proud to see the respect that is felt for and paid to them. Lord Curzon, the governors of the various provinces and other officials are hearty in their commendation of American men and women and American methods, and especially for the services our missionaries ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... alone: In her ears were rings of dead men's bone; The brooch on her breast shone white and fine, 'Twas the polished joint of a Yankee's spine; And the well-carved handle of her fan, Was the finger-bone of a Lincoln man. She turned aside a flower to cull, From a vase which was made of a human skull; For to make her forget the loss of her slaves, Her lovers had rifled dead men's graves. Do you ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... to Concord who stops for a moment in the village library to study French's statue of Emerson will notice the asymmetrical face. On one side it is the face of a keen Yankee farmer, but seen from the other side it is the countenance of a seer, a world's man. This contrast between the parochial Emerson and the greater Emerson interprets many a puzzle in his career. Half a mile ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... as a free-born Yankee skipper, had an inherited and cherished contempt for British "lime-juicers," but he could not help admiring this one. To begin with, her size and tonnage were enormous. Also, she was four-masted, instead of the usual three, and her hull and lower spars were of ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... "Harlequin's Invasion," and R. Pocock's "Robinson Crusoe" were played at the John Street Theatre, New York, that Pantomime made its advent in America. "Mother Goose" was afterwards played, but it did not suit the Yankee's taste. Rich's Harlequin, Gay of "The Beggars Opera," produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, and which it is said made "Rich Gay, and Gay Rich," also went to America, and where, it is said, he became the Chief of an Indian tribe in the Far West. In the South Sea Bubble ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... James (or Yankee) Sullivan, whose real name was Francis Murray, had been taken by the Vigilance Committee and was then (May 20th, 1856), in confinement in the rooms of the Committee. He was very pugilistic and had taken an active part in ballot-box frauds in the several elections just previous. He had ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley

... curled his mustache in astonishment and indignation; he hinted something about beating to quarters, and chastising this piece of Yankee insolence. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... like you English! When you have ze world to milk, you go to one point and stick. It fails, and you fail. What is zat word?"—Mr. Pericles tapped his brow—"pluck,—you want pluck. It is your decadence. Greek, and Russian, and Yankee, all zey beat you. For, it is pluck. You make a pin's head, not a pin. It is in brain and heart you do fail. You have only your position,—an island, and ships, and some favour. You are no match in pluck. We beat you. And we live ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... shrewdness which would have done credit To even a Yankee boy, he Sought the lamp where the wizard had hid it, And, turning a mystical key, Brought it forth, ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... possessed, can offer hotter heats, let them be produced. Those Purgatorial ardencies for the gentle suggestion of torment to thin shades can have little in common with these perspiration-compelling torridities. Why does not some ingenious Yankee improve such times for the purchase, at a ruinous discount, of all thick clothes? I tremble lest some one should offer me an ice-cream for my best woollens! Is it human to resist such an offer? Does it not savor something of Devildom, and a too great familiarity with that ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... Yankee horse, he wasn't 'raised' in Vermont for nothing; so when he caught sight of the switch, he ducked his head, and off went Harry like a flash of lightning, and found himself ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... free colored man to help him in the planting season on his little patch of vegetable garden, in such work as a Yankee would do for himself, but these small farmers trust mostly to the exuberant fertility of the soil, and spare themselves all manual labor, save that of gathering the produce and taking it to market. They form, nevertheless, a very important and interesting class of the population. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... a new "Book of Mormon." The lunacies of this Riley had entered into Dr. Potter and his parishioners, like the legion of devils into the herd of swine, and driven them headlong into a sea of folly. There had been more tongues spoken during the past month in this little Yankee city than would have sufficed for our whole stellar system. Blockheads who were not troubled with an idea once a fortnight, and who could neither write nor speak their mother English decently, had undertaken to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... visit you when sick, I'll pray with you when dying, I'll chat with you, I'll eat with you, I'll smoke with you, and if need be, I'll drink with you—but be your intimate? Never! Why? Because be's a damned Yankee! These are the inextinguishable feelings of a gentleman. I am aware they are out of place in this age, but what's bred in the bone will show in the flesh. Who says it won't, is no gentleman himself and a liar as well! My place in the world was ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... ground-squirrel, and some of them, differ but little in their habits from many of the latter. Other species, again, are more allied to the rabbits, and less like the squirrels; and there are two or three kinds that I should say—using a Yankee expression—have a 'sprinkling' of the rat in them. Some, as the ground-hog, or wood-chuck of the United States, are as large as rabbits, while others, as the leopard-marmot, are ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... resumed "old Peggy," "we must forgive all the world; and myself would forgive any thing sooner than kidnappin' or stealing away the children of Catholics, which these Yankee parsons are so fond ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... seemed to be the most squalid and forlorn of all the stations—outside, an atmosphere of mosquitoes; inside, an atmosphere of brandy and smoke, the master an ague-stricken Yankee, who sat with his bare feet high against the wall, and only deigned to jerk with his head to show in what quarter was the drink and food, and to 'guess that strangers must sleep on the ground, for first-comers had all the beds'—hammocks ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a bit, Matt. He's Irish just the same, and what a Yankee like you don't know about the Irish would fill a book. You know, Matt, there are a few rare white men that can handle Chinamen successfully; now and then you'll run across one that can handle niggers; but I have never yet met anybody who could figure ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... as a thought, but I value it chiefly as a window through which I can obtain insight on the thinker; and Mr. Hawthorne's personality is peculiar, and specially peculiar in a new country like America. He is quiet, fanciful, quaint, and his humour is shaded by a meditativeness of spirit. Although a Yankee, he partakes of none of the characteristics of a Yankee. His thinking and his style have an antique air. His roots strike down through the visible mould of the present, and draw sustenance from the generations under ground. The ghosts that haunt the chamber of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... to marry in 1844; and not long after this event he became a regular contributor to the Anti-Slavery Standard. In this appeared the first series of the Biglow Papers, in which, through vigorous prose and verse, largely in the Yankee dialect of Hosea Biglow, he protested against the evils that brought on the Mexican War. The collected numbers of the series were published in 1848 and shared the popularity of two other of Lowell's greatest works, produced in the same year,—the Fable for Critics and The Vision ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... over 82 planes as its contribution to the military aerial force of 1914. These consisted of Farman, Caudron, and Short biplanes, together with Bleriot, Deperdussin and Nieuport monoplanes, certain R.A.F. types, and other machines of which even the name barely survives—the resourceful Yankee entitles them 'orphans.' It is on record that the work of providing spares might have been rather complicated but for the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... whiffing pipes churchwardens used to smoke. Here macaronis, hands a-droop with laces, Dealt knave to knave in picquet or ecarte, In coats no whit less scarlet than their faces, While bullies hiccuped healths to King and Party, And Yankee slavers, in from Barbadoes, Drove flinty bargains with ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... death on the Niger at the hands of the Boussa people. Again and again drummers hired as trading auxiliaries would send word along the coast and into the country that white men's vessels lying at Lagos, Bonny, Loango or Benguela as the case might be were paying the best rates in calico, rum or Yankee notions for all ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... sir, than if we had been boxed up in a Yankee prison, even though as how we've got some eyelet holes through us, d'ye see?" said Bob Nodder, who was the most severely wounded of any of the party. He observed that I was grieved to see ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... for a pioneer who is actually a world-builder this metaphysical illusion has a partial warrant in historical fact; far more warrant than it could boast of in the fixed and articulated society of Europe, among the moonstruck rebels and sulking poets of the romantic era. Emerson was a shrewd Yankee, by instinct on the winning side; he was a cheery, child-like soul, impervious to the evidence of evil, as of everything that it did not suit his transcendental individuality to appreciate or to notice. More, perhaps, than anybody that has ever lived, he practised the ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... unselfish loyalty while serving his country in the American Revolution, and the story gave Cooper an idea for his "Harvey Birch." The fact that strolling peddlers, staff in hand and pack on back, were common visitors then at country houses, became another aid. "It was after such a visit of a Yankee peddler of the old sort, to the cottage at Angevine, that Harvey's lot in life was decided—he was to be a spy and a peddler." It was something to the author's after regret that he drew the dignity of George Washington into the "Harper" ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... better to arrive in France with something more than the auriferous mineral matter with which he hoped to replace a large portion of discarded ballast. The unusual cargo of empty coffee-bags was looked upon by the customs officials as a bit of Yankee thrift, it being likely enough that the captain could obtain coffee-bags in Mexico much cheaper ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... peninsular officer, Captain Matthew, a member of the Assembly, who would not receive "new light" at command was set upon by spies. The object was the contemptible one of robbing him of his half-pay. A spy declared that he had once heard him call for "Yankee Doodle," at a play in the metropolis. It was a grievous offence, certainly, even had it been true. But it was enough to deprive a man who had served his country in battle of his half-pay. Indeed, he only could get it back again on condition of repairing to ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... now left is that our countries may always be good friends, as they are now, as you and I are—as we always are, whenever we meet under such circumstances as those which occurred when you and I became acquainted. 'Blood is thicker than water,' said old Tatnall, when he sent his Yankee sailors to help Admiral Hope; and the same sentiment is still in the mind of every true Englishman whenever he sees an American ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... fellow wants to ruin the Yankee plane, and perhaps finish the flier who went down with it to ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... Bushmen and their families round there, had more faith in Doc. Wild, a weird Yankee who made medicine in a saucepan, and worked more cures on Bushmen than did the other three doctors of the district together—maybe because the Bushmen had faith in him, or he knew the Bush and Bush constitutions—or, perhaps, because he'd do things which no 'respectable practitioner' ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... any negro in his employ who dared to go to the ballot box. He had left his son but a few thousands out of his large inheritance, and adjured him on his death bed to hold no office under the Federal government and to shoot a Yankee rather than shake his hand. Jack inherited his father's prejudices without his violent temper. He had a contemptuous dislike for the North, a loathing for politics, and adistaste for everybody outside his own diminishing class. Love for Betty Madison ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... leased the Long Creek bottoms, aren't you?" returned Nails, answering the question, Yankee ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster

... peculiarity of Northern labor, that it thinks. It is intelligence working out through the hands. There is more real thought in a Yankee's hand than in a Southerner's head. This is not true of a class, or of single individuals, or of single States. It pervades the air. It is Northern public sentiment. It springs from our ideas of manhood. These influences, acting through generations, have been wrought into ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... "Yankee Doodle," the coats of the marines were suddenly changed from scarlet to blue, and the American flag was displayed over the quarter-deck. Rodgers took his captive and his prize to Newport. He made another less successful cruise, and about the middle of January, 1814, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... in the Problem. Last fall, September 1946, in an article in the Yankee Magazine, I asked for nuts and pollen of the American chestnut. As a result the following persons from many different parts of the country sent in nuts: Mr. Henry Hartung, Methuen, Mass.; Mrs. Marie ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... manifested an interest in her, and went down to my dinner, and when I paid for it I paid for Kate's also. When I went on deck, I found that I was a lion, and the passengers insisted upon hearing me roar. They asked questions with Yankee pertinacity, and I finally told a select party of them that I had taken Kate out of her step-mother's house by the way of the attic window, but I was careful not to call any names, for if Mrs. Loraine behaved herself, I did not care to expose ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... it was going to look. It will not look like an illustration in some "garden beautiful" magazine. It will look like—like a brook! I am tremendously excited now at the prospect of seeing it look like a brook, a little, lazy, trickling Yankee brook. If I ever let it look like anything else, I believe I shall deserve to ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... Mr. Gibney. "Fight and die is the last resort. She's eight miles astern and gainin' every minute, and when she's within two miles she'll open fire. Of course we won't be hit unless they've got a Yankee gunner aboard." ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... am. The air is now my proper medium, and anyway, John, my gallant Yankee, for a man like me the best tonic is always action, action, ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... bride accustomed as she had been to the simplicity of a home in which the only luxury was in giving help to others. Colonel William C. Preston, the eloquent South Carolina orator, met the "little red-headed Yankee" with distinct aversion to her "want of style and presence," but was soon heard to declare with enthusiastic admiration that she was "an encyclopedia in small print." Here among ancestral trees she found ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett



Words linked to "Yankee" :   north, America, Union soldier, the States, federal, U.S.A., northern, New England, American, United States, United States of America, Yankee corn, USA, US, New Englander, Federal soldier, Northerner, U.S., Yankee-Doodle



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