Yank

Clipping of Yankee.

• IPA^(key): /jæŋk/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æŋk

Yank (plural Yanks)

1. (US) A Yankee, a Northerner: someone from the Northern United States, especially from New England.
   • 1865, unnamed Confederate officer, according to Lieutenant Joseph E. Moody, U.S.V., “Life in Confederate Prisons”, in Civil War Papers, Volume II, Massachusetts Commandery (1900), page 368:

     Halt! come down there, you Yanks, come down!

   • 1944, Howard Fast, Freedom Road, M.E. Sharpe, published 1995, →ISBN, page 33:

     “I do wish I might of found you in my sights when you was with them damn Yanks,” Abner added.

   • 2004, O. K. Williams, The Way the Cards Fall, Trafford Publishing, →ISBN, page 16:

     Corporal Bob explained, “The Yanks has tha best weapons. But us Rebs know how to shoot tha damn things. […] ”

2. (slang, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, UK, sometimes derogatory, by extension) An American: someone from the United States.
   • 1951 June 11, “The Yanks Are Coming: U.S. shows world we are playing for keeps as 4th Division leaves to join Eisenhower's NATO army”, in Life, page 38:

     “This time,” he [General Alphonse-Pierre Juin] told the Yanks, “you have not crossed to win new victories but to preserve peace. […] ”

3. Short for Yankee, meaning, in the American Civil War, someone on the Union side.

• (inhabitant of the USA): American; see Thesaurus:American