peckerwood

Noun

peckerwood (plural peckerwoods)

1. (Appalachia, Southern US, slang) A woodpecker.
   • On the morning of the next, one of Mr. White's daughters came into the house to inform me that there was a "peckerwood" in a tree in the yard. I immediately took my gun and went out to investigate thinking that perhaps it was a Pileolated Woodpecker, a bird I wanted to obtain.1900 January 15, T. P. Drowne, “A Trip to Fauquier Co., Virginia; With Notes on the Specimens Obtained.”, in Walter F. Webb, editor, The Museum: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Research in Natural...
   • When I was a boy, I rooted over an old dead sourwood to get some peckerwood eggs.1953, Jesse Stuart, The Good Spirit of Laurel Ridge, New York: McGraw-Hill, →LCCN, →OL
2. (Appalachia, Southern US) A peckerwood sawmill.
   • Throughout this territory are mills of every variety and size, from the small "peckerwood" tractor mill capable of cutting only a few thousand feet of lumber per day to the world's largest pine lumber mill with a capacity of more than one million feet per day.1933 January 7, Traffic Service Corporation, “Serving an essential Industry: Lumber”, in The Traffic World, volume 51, number 1, page 8
   • The Langdale Company's new centralized sawmill and debarker in 1958 constituted a tremendous advance over the old peckerwood technology.2002, John E. Lancaster, Judge Harley and His Boys: The Langdale Story, 1st edition, Macon: Mercer University Press, →ISBN, →OL, page 222
3. (US, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur) A white person, especially a Southerner, or one who is ignorant, rustic, or bigoted.
   • All the time I was stretched out on the infirmary cot I kept looking at the blank walls and seeing the mean, murdering faces of those Southern peckerwoods when they went after Big Six and the others with their knives.1946, Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, Bernard Wolfe, “Don’t Cry, Ma”, in Really the Blues, New York, N.Y.: Random House, book 1 (1899–1923: A Nothin’ but a Child), page 16
   • Just as prejudiced as a Mississippi peckerwood when it comes to colored people.1967, John Oliver Killens, 'Sippi, New York: Trident Press, →LCCN, →OL, page 50

   Synonyms:

   white person, redneck

4. (slang) A white (male) inmate, especially one who is racist or who is a member of a race-based prison gang.