word yan-kee, which he applied as an intensive; for example, a yan-kee fast hoss. The term was so constantly in his mouth that (about 1715) he became known to the whole College as Yankee Jon. Home-going students spread this word through New England, using it in the same half-derogatory sense in which it was applied to its ungainly author—as Yankee tricks, Yankee notions, etc. Students of our national folk-songs will recall that even “Yankee Doodle” displayed a decided simplicity and gawkiness—that he was indeed the laughing-stock of the British forces during the Revolution. But “Yankee,” thus thrown in the teeth of the Americans as a term of opprobrium, was accepted and caught up by them as a battle-cry. There is no need to tell of its triumphant emergence as the synonym, first of New Englanders, and later of the whole nation; or of its extraordinary vitality, last shown in the World War, when in spite of all attempts at substitutes this old canting term represented us throughout Europe. Surely no catchword of an almost forgotten Harvard character has ever had a more remarkable career. In this day of monuments and memorials, why should not a tablet mark the site where dwelt the man who put Yankee into the dictionary?[1]
- ↑ See W. Gordon, History of the American Revolution (1788), i, 481; Hall, College Words and Customs (1856), 505. In the same way, the students
