redneck, noun

Forms:
Also with initial capital.
Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Translation of Afrikaans rooinek (but see also quotation 1900).
obsolescent, often derogatory
rooinek.
1898 Empire 29 Jan. (Pettman)In South Africa, Englishmen, owing to their more rosy complexion, as compared with other white men living there, are jocosely spoken of as ‘red necks’ (rooi nek in Transvaal Dutch, roodnek in the Dutch of Holland).
1900 A.H. Keane Boer States: Land & People p.xviiiRooinek, ‘Red-neck’, in reference originally to some merinos introduced by an English farmer into the Free State, and marked with a red brand on the neck. These were spoken of as red-necks — an expression afterwards extended to the English themselves, and then as a term of contempt to the British troops in red uniform.
1921 Chambers’s Jrnl (U.K.) Jan. 32I was thinking of the efforts that that infernal rooinek (red-neck) of a son of yours is making to deprive me of my only child.
1936 R. Campbell Mithraic Emblems 111To find a redneck cheap upon this day You do not need to wander far away.
1944 J. Mockford Here Are S. Africans 83The South Africans — Dutch and British, Boer and Red-neck — were..living a colonial and frontier life enriched by the manufactured products of mid-Victorian England.
1961 T. Matshikiza Choc. for my Wife 85They called us boers that time when we were fighting with English Red Necks.
1972 J. McClure Caterpillar Cop (1974) 18What’s with this Red-neck?..Another bloody English immigrant?
1979 J. Gratus Jo’burgers 14His pale skin burnt red by the sun gave him away immediately as a ‘redneck’; and..his accent was English, not Dutch.
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18981979

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derogatory or offensive
obsolete or obsolescent
red-lipped, participial adjectivepart. adj.red oath, noun phrasen. phr.
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