Yankee OED

My friends got married. I approved. Congrats to them. The wedding was in the bride's hometown of Hereford, which is in the panhandle of Texas. It's known as the beef capital of the world. It's a dry dry land that survives on a buried aquifer and gov't subsidies. The people of Hereford were very friendly, but they had a half sarcastic, half joshing, half pure hidden hatred of Yanks. Before this trip, I'd hardly thought of my designation as a yankee. Dictionary.com claims that the term carries less emotion [nowadays] except when referring to the baseball team. I must politely disagree. To west Texans, it is a term that is full of secret knowledge, and most of that knowledge doesn't seem complimentary.

Then there was the question of who geographically is a Yank. Outside of the US, we all are; see: Yankee, Go Home. At the wedding, a couple of characters from Milwaukee were surprised to find it ascribed to them, assuming that a yankee was exclusively a New England to South Jersey thing. I've always assumed I fully fall into the Yankee category, as Ohio was a mostly full participant in the Civil War. I didn't feel any less yankified when I was in Minneapolis, though. It's still a midwestern town, protestant, and slaveless in history. How far west does Yankee go? The determination of your yankee bonafides seems to lie entirely on a geographic point of view. From where we sit, that's how things are seen.

Yankee
1. a. a nickname for a native or inhabitant of New England, or, more widely, of the northern States generally; during the War of Secession* applied by the Confederates to the soldiers of the Federal army.
b. an American**
3. Whiskey sweetened with molasses. colloq.
5. b. adj. That is a Yankee; pertaining to or characteristic of Yankees (often with connotation of cleverness, cunning, or cold calculation); loosely, belonging to the United States.

*War of Secession? Is this the Southern name for it? Why would the Brits use this term? (ahem, we won)
**American? Paraguayans and Chileans and the like might not agree.

The etymology is entirely unclear. Possible sources - mangling of the Cherokee word for coward or slave, eankee; perhaps from the diminutive for John, Janke; maybe an indian mispronunciation of the French word anglais (english).