"ecky-becky" meaning in English

See ecky-becky in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-ecky-becky.ogg [Australia] Forms: ecky-beckies [plural]
Etymology: Borrowed from Bajan ecky-becky. According to Bajan lore, the word ecky-becky is of African origin and can be traced back to a time before Africans came to Barbados. In one Igbo community in West Africa a French man allegedly named Equé Bequé, or something similar, attempted to settle there and colonize the village, but failed, as he had no money or army. From then on, the Igbo people called any poor Caucasian "Ecky-becky." This word would later be taken by these people to Barbados when they were captured along with other African tribes and brought into slavery. Etymology templates: {{bor|en|bjs|ecky-becky}} Bajan ecky-becky Head templates: {{en-noun}} ecky-becky (plural ecky-beckies)
  1. (Barbados, slang, derogatory) A poor white person. Specifically, a lower-class descendant of the whites who worked the land before the arrival of African slaves. Tags: Barbados, derogatory, slang Related terms: poor white trash

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for ecky-becky meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "bjs",
        "3": "ecky-becky"
      },
      "expansion": "Bajan ecky-becky",
      "name": "bor"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Borrowed from Bajan ecky-becky. According to Bajan lore, the word ecky-becky is of African origin and can be traced back to a time before Africans came to Barbados. In one Igbo community in West Africa a French man allegedly named Equé Bequé, or something similar, attempted to settle there and colonize the village, but failed, as he had no money or army. From then on, the Igbo people called any poor Caucasian \"Ecky-becky.\" This word would later be taken by these people to Barbados when they were captured along with other African tribes and brought into slavery.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "ecky-beckies",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "ecky-becky (plural ecky-beckies)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Barbadian English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A poor white person. Specifically, a lower-class descendant of the whites who worked the land before the arrival of African slaves."
      ],
      "id": "en-ecky-becky-en-noun-zWdS8Y9F",
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
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        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Barbados, slang, derogatory) A poor white person. Specifically, a lower-class descendant of the whites who worked the land before the arrival of African slaves."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "poor white trash"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Barbados",
        "derogatory",
        "slang"
      ]
    }
  ],
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      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/ac/En-au-ecky-becky.ogg/En-au-ecky-becky.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/En-au-ecky-becky.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "ecky-becky"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
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        "2": "bjs",
        "3": "ecky-becky"
      },
      "expansion": "Bajan ecky-becky",
      "name": "bor"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Borrowed from Bajan ecky-becky. According to Bajan lore, the word ecky-becky is of African origin and can be traced back to a time before Africans came to Barbados. In one Igbo community in West Africa a French man allegedly named Equé Bequé, or something similar, attempted to settle there and colonize the village, but failed, as he had no money or army. From then on, the Igbo people called any poor Caucasian \"Ecky-becky.\" This word would later be taken by these people to Barbados when they were captured along with other African tribes and brought into slavery.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "ecky-beckies",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {},
      "expansion": "ecky-becky (plural ecky-beckies)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "poor white trash"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "Barbadian English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English rhyming phrases",
        "English slang",
        "English terms borrowed from Bajan",
        "English terms derived from Bajan",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A poor white person. Specifically, a lower-class descendant of the whites who worked the land before the arrival of African slaves."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "poor",
          "poor"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Barbados, slang, derogatory) A poor white person. Specifically, a lower-class descendant of the whites who worked the land before the arrival of African slaves."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Barbados",
        "derogatory",
        "slang"
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/En-au-ecky-becky.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "ecky-becky"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (4d5d0bb and edd475d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.