Peckerwood.
I heard this used to describe someone I know to be of excellent character and high morals. It appeared to have been used perjoratively.

I finally found it defined in OED as a person of low or insignificent standing -- BUT -- the person using the word descriptively was nasty-faced.
Is there another definition?

In a rush. Excuse spelling OK?

It originated as a term by southern blacks uaed in reference to poor southern whites. It has expanded to mean any white.

W3 gives 'cracker' as the pejorative sense.

-joe (for an unabridged, they do get terse) friday

I don't understand 'cracker' - what does that mean as a pejorative? Over here it means a firecracker.

3. Offensive a. Used as a disparaging term for a poor white person of the rural, especially southeast United States. b. Used as a disparaging term for a white person. [AHD4]

-joe (poor white trash) friday

Before the Braves moved there Atlanta had a minor league team called the Crackers. Back in the day it was common for a Negor League team in a city to take the name of the local white team, adding the word Black. Hence, one of my top two favorite baseball team names, the Atlanta Black Crackers.

I was not aware of that definition.

My best guess is that most people using the term 'peckerwood' are not aware of its etymology. In every instance I recall hearing the term - and it numbers at least in the dozens and probably in the hundreds - it had no discernible racial over- (or under-) tones. It was simply an unnecessary expansion of calling someone a 'pecker' or a 'dick.'

As my Alabama grandparents used the word quite frequently about and to me when I was a child (much like rascal or cute lil dickens, etc), I'm hoping they did not think I was a dick.

OK... "dick" as a perjorative?
(Grew up in the 1940a-50s - sadldy lacking in jargonesque-scatology )

Slang word for a penis, or for someone who's a real jerk, someone who "screws another person over."

It's possible that the person using the term doesn't know the person about whom the term was used to be of excellent character and high morals. It's also possible that the person using the term knows something that you don't. I one time questioned a woman I worked with about her bad-mouthing her boss. I said that I thought he was a reasonably good person. She responded, "You're not a woman working under him."

Oh wow, how did I miss this thread?!? First off, let's stop insulting my Dad (named Dick)(and it gets worse; his last name is Ball..)(no, I'm not joking, it really is...)

Next, "cracker". The term is a shortening of "whip cracker", as in the slave boss. Tell that to anyone who tries to use it to insult you. They'll probably never use it again! I never understood it either, until I was informed by a black colleague. And although I've worked with mostly black folks for more than 25 years, I don't recall ever hearing it. Maybe it has to do with the area, I don't know. :0)

Do you know of a dictionary or etymology resource that gives the origin of cracker as the shortening of “whip cracker”? I take that lone statement of origin to be apocryphal. Persons who were called crackers during the time of slavery were generally not plantation owners, and whip-cracking overseers were not nearly as numerous as the persons called crackers.

Dave Wilton says that it comes from a 16th century term for 'liar' or 'braggart'. He says of the 'whipcracker' etymology that "[t]here is no evidence to support this contention."

Dave Wilton is a pretty reliable source in these matters.

Nope, I got nothin' other than what I was told by a source I respect, who doesn't publish on the internet. Don't know where he got it. Neither I nor he (nor you?) was around during those times to know. Don't know why he would tell me something he himself did not believe, so I assume he believed it. Other than that, I got nothin'... :0)

When I was a kid in the South, I too was told 'cracker' came from whipcracker. I began to question that as I only heard it applied to po' white trash, not whites in general. What we may have here, twosleepy, is yet another folk etymology.

cracker (pejorative) according to those wiki-stalwarts.

I am willing to accept that. As I stated, I don't know. I have seen the "whip cracker" idea on the internet, so it is not unknown, but that doesn't make it correct. It is also possible that a term can arise from more than one source, or develop into usage in more than one place or time, which would preclude a definite, single-sourced etymology. I'm not saying that is the case here, but I think there's at least the possibility it could be.

Controversial postulation follows: Shouldn't descriptivism apply to etymologies as well as the words themselves? Then you must accept "folk etymology" as "real", because users of it have already done so. :0)

Sounds like you really meant descriptivism and no, it doesn't. Descriptivism says that you accept terms such as 'Jerusalem artichoke" which were formed by folk etymology but that doesn't mean that you have to accept the notion that they are artichokes or have anything to do with Jerusalem.

Would be interesting to look at the etymology, or rather usage history (there is a difference) of terms like 'folk etymology.' It's a very bourgeois usage. Seems to be implying that the 'people', the great unwashed, that bunch of ordinary morons out there, as opposed to the elite grammarians and historians and other PhD experts, always get it wrong. 'Folk' in this context is synonymous with "false."

In other contexts this attitude can have quite sinister overtones. For example, just say a massacre of indigenous people occurred by members of the invading culture 120 years ago. Official records of the time say 30 natives were killed. But unwritten oral 'folk' lore passed down among the descendants of the indigenous people says it was more like 300. What is normally regarded as the more accurate? Just because something is not documented from its inception doesn't necessarily mean it is incorrect.

You are right, Fal; I meant descriptivism. I edited it so as not to confuse future readers. Thanks for catching that.

What I mean by "real" is that maybe many people know that it's inaccurate, but they still use it they way the "folks" expect. One's own internal acceptance is optional, as always...

I always wondered about those 'chokes. Has anyone eaten them, or does anyone eat them regularly? I'd love to try a recipe, just for fun. The Spanish for sunflower, similar to the Italian, is "girasol", which literally means "sun turner". I don't know of a good place for etymologies of Spanish words, but maybe one of you does. For example, "paraguas" (umbrella) has always stumped me as to whether it comes from "parar" ("to stop") or "para" ("for"). Both make sense. It must be the same as for "parasol". It's interesting that our English word, umbrella, is used almost exclusively (in the US) for rain, but the name does not refer to rain or water, but instead to shade. :0)

Grammatical descriptivism looks at the language as it is used by native speakers and derives the rules from that usage. Etymology is much the same in one respect. We look at the evidence and make our best guesses as to the history of a word. Folks can come up with all kinds of ideas about what the origin of a word is, but if an idea doesn't have good evidence to support it it remains suspect. Similarly with grammatical usages, people can make mistakes and they are not seen as "good grammar" just because someone spoke them. Someone can say, "I ain't got no problems" and that is perfectly good grammar in some speech communities. Someone says, "I no have problems" and that is just a mistake or something that came from a non-native speaker.

Grammar is variable from dialect to dialect and can change over time. Etymology is pure fact. We don't necessarily know what the facts are but wrong guesses are wrong guesses.

Hmmmm. Here I will have to disagree. There's not much pure anything in this world. How do you distinguish between a "pure" fact and a fact without an adjective? In the end, you are accepting another person's "facts" and really have no evidence of your own about the veracity, unless you actually witnessed it yourself. Does the acceptance by a majority make a "fact" true? How do you know what a "wrong guess" is if you don't know what the "pure fact" is? If people are guessing, there must not be a "pure fact" available, or they'd quit. Since we have scientists who change the "pure facts" about everything from what makes us fat to the origin of the universe on a regular basis, I'd say we're all guessing our way through our lives, and choose what we will believe as we go along, based in "pure fact" or not. :0)

I would think it would be from 'para' but perhaps zmjezhd will enlighten us further on that.

Parasol (online ety.)
1616, from Fr. parasol (1580), from It. parasole, lit. "protection from the sun," from para- "defense against" (from verb parere "to ward off") + sole "sun," from L. solem (nom. sol).

As for Jerusalem Artichoke (helianthus tuberosus) (aardpeer or topinambour [D.] ), it’s funny that it has nothing to do with Jerusalem nor Artichoke except for the faint nutty artichoke-like taste.
I had them in my garden for years. Although they never flowered they gave a good amount of roots.You can prepare them just cooked until à point - done and nothing much added, but any creamed mild sauce will do it good because the taste is not very exciting. Considered healthy.

When I said "[e]tymology is a pure fact" I was using "etymology" to mean the actual history of the development of a word. Some caveman eons ago cobbled together a bunch of phonemes to mean a cave bear. That set of phonemes became accepted by the whole bunch of cavemen and was used to mean what we know as 'cave bear.' If some of the people moved away from the area where the cave bears lived they still had the word and it may have been used to mean the area where the cave bears lived. Eventually it may have come to mean the area where any sort of bear lived, if there were no bears of any sort in the area where the speakers lived it may have come to mean the climate of that area. There are a lot of steps in this lineage that we can never reconstruct, but the lineage is still there. Of course we're never 100% certain. We make guesses based on what we know. If we're satisfied with those guesses we stop there and continue merrily on. This is what separates science from myth. In science we take those guesses and look for evidence that confirms or contradicts those guesses. In the case, e.g., of 'cracker' as a derogatory term for poor or racist whites some people have made the 'whipcracker' guess. If we find the term 'cracker' used for something very similar to the modern definition in a context that can easily be taken to have been connected to the modern usage and that pre-dates the circumstances that are involved in the 'whipcracker' guess than we can reasonably assume that the 'whipcracker' guess is wrong.

[Quote=Faldage]
In the case, e.g., of 'cracker' as a derogatory term for poor or racist whites some people have made the 'whipcracker' guess. If we find the term 'cracker' used for something very similar to the modern definition in a context that can easily be taken to have been connected to the modern usage and that pre-dates the circumstances that are involved in the 'whipcracker' guess than we can reasonably assume that the 'whipcracker' guess is wrong

Unless evidence can be found that the pejorative term 'cracker' has evolved from that pre-dated moment and from 'whipcracker ' along seperate lines. Then both guesses are right.

The way my dad used the word peckerwood was unrelated to race, as I recall. He used it to describe anybody who was any kind of cheat--monetarily or maybe someone who did extremely shoddy work; that kind of thing.