peckerwood

Inversion of woodpecker. Application to white people is due to the perception that the woodpecker is a symbol of whites, whereas the crow is a symbol of blacks.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpɛkəwʊd/

peckerwood (plural peckerwoods)

1. (Southern US, slang) A woodpecker.
   • 1900 January 15, Drowne, T. P., “A Trip to Fauquier Co., Virginia; With Notes on the Specimens Obtained.”, in Webb, Walter F., editor, The Museum: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Research in Natural Science, volume 6, number 3, Albion, page 38:

     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.

   • 1953, Stuart, Jesse, The Good Spirit of Laurel Ridge‎, New York: McGraw-Hill, LCCN 53010630, OL 6136729M:

     When I was a boy, I rooted over an old dead sourwood to get some peckerwood eggs.

   • 1992, Morgan, Robert, The Mountains Won't Remember Us: And Other Stories, New York: Scribner, published 2000, →ISBN, OL 6783044M, page 40:

     There was nothing but a peckerwood on an oak tree.

2. (Southern US) A peckerwood sawmill.
   • 1933 January 7, Traffic Service Corporation, “Serving an essential Industry: Lumber”, in The Traffic World‎, volume 51, number 1, page 8:

     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.

   • 2002, Lancaster, John E., Judge Harley and His Boys: The Langdale Story, First edition, Macon: Mercer University Press, →ISBN, OL 8317650M, page 222:

     The Langdale Company's new centralized sawmill and debarker in 1958 constituted a tremendous advance over the old peckerwood technology.

3. (US, offensive, slang) A white person, especially a Southerner, or one who is ignorant, rustic, or bigoted.
   • 1946, Mezzrow, Mezz; Wolfe, Bernard, Really the Blues, New York: Kensington, published 2001, →ISBN, OL 7941497M, page 16:

     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.

   • 1967, Killens, John Oliver, 'Sippi‎, New York: Trident Press, LCCN 67016400, OL 5539087M, page 50:

     Just as prejudiced as a Mississippi peckerwood when it comes to colored people.

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

• For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:peckerwood.

• (white person): See whitey
• (rustic): redneck

• featherwood
• wood, woodpile

• peckerhead

• woodpecker