Pickaninny
adj, noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A black child. colloquial, ethnic, offensive, slur
"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."
- 2 (ethnic slur) offensive term for a Black child wordnet
- 1 Little, small. archaic, not-comparable
"For quotations using this term, see Citations:pickaninny."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"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."
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.