hensopper, noun

/hensˈɔpə(r)/
Forms:
Also ’ensopper, hendsopper.
Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Afrikaans, hensop (see hensop verb intransitive) + agential suffix -er.
derogatory
1. In historical contexts
a. hands-upper sense 1 a.
1960 [see bitter-einder sense 1].
1982 K. Davie in Sunday Times 21 Mar. 44I ask if joiners are same as hensoppers (hands-uppers)? ‘No they’re not!’ he says emphatically, ‘the hensoppers gave up when the British came, the joiners joined the British and fought for them for five shillings a day.’
1987 in Bunn & Taylor From S. Afr. (1988) 110Hensoppers, literally, ‘handsuppers’ — derogatory slang for Boers who surrendered to the British.
1990 Sunday Times 8 July 18By the start of 1901 there were more Boer soldiers either back on their farms or on the English side as ‘hensoppers’ and ‘joiners’ than there were active on the battlefields of the Transvaal and the Free State.
b. joiner sense 1.
1979 [see hands-upper sense 1 b].
1989 Reader’s Digest Illust. Hist. of S. Afr. 257Known contemptuously as ‘joiners’ or hensoppers (hands-uppers) they received scant sympathy from the Boers still in the field.
2. figurative and transferred sense. hands-upper sense 2.
1974 Sunday Times 25 Aug. 15If he had such a plan in mind, why did he recently denounce verligte Nationalists who have been urging a revision of race policy, as ‘Hensoppers?’
1977 Sunday Times 6 Feb. 10For him there are two kinds: Real Afrikaners in the Kruger-Vorster mould following the Voortrekker road and ‘hensoppers’, rich intellectuals, found on university campuses,..often pawns in the hands of Afrikaner enemies.
1980 Weekend Post 6 Sept. 5The leader of the PFP..was accused of ‘blatant intimidation’ of the electorate...At times the PFP was described as ‘spoilers’ and ‘hensoppers’.
1986 E. Prov. Herald 4 Mar. 10If there are ‘hensoppers’, and he concedes there are, why do they have to wait until the UN has the place surrounded?
1986 Cape Times 6 Mar.The bittereinders might talk of nuking the UN, but the hensoppers would likely win the day, as they did at the end of the Boer War.
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derogatory or offensive
historical
hensop, verb intransitivev.herald, nounn.
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