pickaninny

plural pickaninnies · alternative piccaninny · alternative picaninny · alternative picinniny · alternative pikinini · alternative pickaninnie · alternative pickininnie · alternative pickininny · alternative piccanin · alternative pickny

1. colloquialethnicoffensiveslurA black child.First known use 17th c.

   Piccaninnies squatted around absorbing the lesson.

   1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 60

   4 more examples

   Governor,— that will make a good settler,— that's my Pickaninny!

   1817 January 4, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Observer, Sydney

   A small white donkey glimmered into sight, and behind it a milk cart, rattling its cans, and behind that ran a small and ragged piccaninny, a child of perhaps seven years, whose teeth were rattling so loudly they sounded like falling pebbles even across the width of the garden.

   1952, Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, Panther, published 1974, page 134

   What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England. It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies

   2002 January 10, Boris Johnson, “If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there”, in The Daily Telegraph

   The pickaninny was an imagined, subhuman black juvenile who was typically depicted outdoors, merrily accepting (or even inviting) violence. The word (alternatively spelled “picaninny” or “piccaninny”) dates to the seventeenth century, […]

   2011, Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence, NYU Press, →ISBN, page 34

alternative piccaninny · alternative picaninny · alternative picinniny · alternative pikinini · alternative pickaninnie · alternative pickininnie · alternative pickininny · alternative piccanin · alternative pickny

1. archaicnot comparableLittle, small.First known use 18th c.

   For quotations using this term, see Citations:pickaninny.