pickaninny

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Probably from a Portuguese pidgin, from Portuguese pequenino (“boy, child”), noun use of pequenino (“tiny”), from pequeno (“small”). In South African uses probably partly after Afrikaans pikenien.

Pronunciation
  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈpɪkənɪni/

Noun

pickaninny (plural pickaninnies)

  1. (colloquial, now offensive, ethnic slur) A black child. [from 17th c.]
    • 1952, Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, Panther, published 1974, page 134:
      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.
    • 2002 January 10, Boris Johnson, “If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there”, in The Daily Telegraph‎:
      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
    • 2011, Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence, NYU Press, →ISBN, page 34:
      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, […]

Derived terms

Descendants

Translations

Adjective

pickaninny (not comparable)

  1. (now rare) Little, small. [from 18th c.]
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:pickaninny.

References
    • Ernest Giles, Australia Twice Traversed (1889) (confirms that the adjective meaning "little" is used in Australia)

    Further reading
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