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."
Example
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.
Related phrases
More for "pickaninny"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.