peckerwood

English - English

Definition of peckerwood in English English dictionary

A white person, especially a Southerner, or when regarded as ignorant or rustic

All the time I was stretched out on the infirmary cot I kept looking at the blank walls and seeing the mean, murdering faces of those Southern peckerwoods when they went after Big Six and the others with their knives.

A southern term for poor anglo-saxon protestants

{i} woodpecker, type of bird with a hard bill for boring into trees; (Offensive Slang used in the USA) rural white person from the South who has a lower than average income

Etymology

[ 'pe-k&r-"wud ] (noun.) 1904. Inversion of woodpecker, from the bird seen as the symbol of Whites, as opposed to the black crow, symbol of Blacks.