Kaintuck

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English

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Adjective

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Kaintuck (not comparable)

  1. (US, dialect) Of or pertaining to the US state of Kentucky.
    • c. 1958, Theodore Sturgeon, "The Man Who Figured Everything" in The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. X (2005 North Atlantic Books edition), →ISBN (Google books preview):
      His single shot had clipped a boulder right by Coe's head, just the way a Kaintuck rifleman barks a squirrel.
    • 2009, Robert Hicks, A Separate Country[1], →ISBN:
      I felt at home in the city. Me, a Kaintuck country cracker.

Noun

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Kaintuck (plural Kaintucks)

  1. (US, dialect) A native or resident of Kentucky, especially one who has a rustic character.
    • 1902, Alfred Henry Lewis, Wolfville Days, ch. 9 Colonel Sterett's Reminiscences (Google books preview):
      "Sech deescriptions . . . brings back my yearlin' days in good old Tennessee. We-all is a heaplike you Kaintucks down our way."
    • 1998, Barbara Hambly, Fever Season[2], →ISBN:
      There was a time when January would have been surprised that a Kaintuck could accomplish such mathematics.
  2. (US, dialect, obsolete) A worker, especially one having a crude or rowdy manner, on a boat that transported commercial goods on the Mississippi River.
    • 1974, Sylvia Wrobel and George Grider, Isaac Shelby: Kentucky's First Governor and Hero of Three Wars, Cumberland Press, p. 130:
      Most New Orleans citizens . . . were used to the Kentucky riverboatmen, the Kaintucks others called them; they called themselves alligator-horses, and they were largely a rough and tumble breed.
    • 1996, Arthur P. Miller Jr., Trails Across America, →ISBN, page 76:
      By 1800 as many as ten thousand "Kaintucks" — the local term for boatmen from anywhere north of Natchez — annually journeyed on the trace, the most direct overland route home.
    • 2008, James A. Crutchfield, It Happened on the Mississippi River, →ISBN, page 44:
      To the people along the lower Mississippi River, the flatboat men eventually came to be known as Kaintucks, whether or not they hailed from Kentucky.

Proper noun

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Kaintuck

  1. (US, dialect) The US state of Kentucky.
    • 1873, Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, chapter 1, in The Gilded Age:
      Si Higgins he's ben over to Kaintuck n' married a high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families.
    • 1921, John Buchan, chapter 12, in The Path of the King:
      "There ain't no sech hunter as Jim ever came out of Virginny, no, nor out of Caroliny, neither. It was him that fust telled me of Kaintuck."

Synonyms

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