Kaintuck

1. USdialectalnot comparableOf or pertaining to the US state of Kentucky.

   I felt at home in the city. Me, a Kaintuck country cracker.

   2009, Robert Hicks, A Separate Country, →ISBN

   1 more example

   His single shot had clipped a boulder right by Coe's head, just the way a Kaintuck rifleman barks a squirrel.

   c. 1958, Theodore Sturgeon, "The Man Who Figured Everything" in The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. X (2005 North Atlantic Books edition) (Google books preview)

plural Kaintucks

1. USdialectalA native or resident of Kentucky, especially one who has a rustic character.

   There was a time when January would have been surprised that a Kaintuck could accomplish such mathematics.

   1998, Barbara Hambly, Fever Season, →ISBN

   1 more example

   "Sech deescriptions . . . brings back my yearlin' days in good old Tennessee. We-all is a heaplike you Kaintucks down our way."

   1902, Alfred Henry Lewis, Wolfville Days, ch. 9 Colonel Sterett's Reminiscences (Google books preview)

2. USdialectalobsoleteA worker, especially one having a crude or rowdy manner, on a boat that transported commercial goods on the Mississippi River.

   To the people along the lower Mississippi River, the flatboat men eventually came to be known as Kaintucks, whether or not they hailed from Kentucky.

   2008, James A. Crutchfield, It Happened on the Mississippi River, →ISBN, page 44

   2 more examples

   Most New Orleans citizens . . . were used to the Kentucky riverboatmen, the Kaintucks others called them; they called themselves alligator-horses, and they were largely a rough and tumble breed.

   1974, Sylvia Wrobel and George Grider, Isaac Shelby: Kentucky's First Governor and Hero of Three Wars, Cumberland Press, p. 130

   By 1800 as many as ten thousand "Kaintucks" — the local term for boatmen from anywhere north of Natchez — annually journeyed on the trace, the most direct overland route home.

   1996, Arthur P. Miller Jr., Trails Across America, →ISBN, page 76

1. USdialectalThe US state of Kentucky.

   Si Higgins he's ben over to Kaintuck n' married a high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families.

   1873, Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, chapter 1, in The Gilded Age

   1 more example

   "There ain't no sech hunter as Jim ever came out of Virginny, no, nor out of Caroliny, neither. It was him that fust telled me of Kaintuck."

   1921, John Buchan, chapter 12, in The Path of the King

   Synonyms: Kentuckian, Kentuckian