ecky-becky
ecky-becky noun: a poor white person. Specifically, a lower-class descendant of the whites who worked the land before the arrival of African slaves.
Noun
ecky-becky (plural ecky-beckies)
- A poor white person. Specifically, a lower-class descendant of the whites who worked the land before the arrival of African slaves.
Forms of ecky-becky
| plural | ecky-beckies |
|---|
Origin of ecky-becky
Borrowed from Bajan ecky-becky. According to Bajan lore, the word ecky-becky is of African origin and can be traced back to a time before Africans came to Barbados. In one Igbo community in West Africa a French man allegedly named Equé Bequé, or something similar, attempted to settle there and colonize the village, but failed, as he had no money or army. From then on, the Igbo people called any poor Caucasian "Ecky-becky." This word would later be taken by these people to Barbados when they were captured along with other African tribes and brought into slavery.
Questions about ecky-becky
- What does ecky-becky mean?
- Ecky-becky means a poor white person. Specifically, a lower-class descendant of the whites who worked the land before the arrival of African slaves.
- What part of speech is ecky-becky?
- Ecky-becky is a noun.
- What is the plural of ecky-becky?
- The plural of ecky-becky is ecky-beckies.
Words near ecky-becky in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ecky-becky (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-ecky-becky.ogg.
Cite this entry: “ecky-becky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ecky-becky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.