gendronf
Well-known member
Rookie":b03m2b30 said:Ok, for the record. I been thru this once before. My momma was a Cajun and my daddy was a Hillbilly,
Thanks Rookie to be who you are.
I did'nt know the meaning of Hillbilly and I made a search. I suppose that somebody on this forum would like to Know. If there is another definition let me know
Marcel
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (whose editors persist in hyphenating the word as "hill-billy"), a hillbilly is "a person from a remote rural or mountainous area, especially of the southeastern U.S." The earliest written occurrence of the term on record is from the New York Journal of 1900, which defined a "hillbilly" as "a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him." Oddly enough, the OED does not classify "hillbilly" as a derogatory term, although that quotation contains ample evidence that it is, at least when it's coming from the pen of a New Yorker.
While the "hill" of "hillbilly" is no mystery, the "billy" part is harder to explain. "Billy" has been used to mean "fellow" or "brother" in northern England and Scotland since the 16th century, and may be related to "bully," an earlier term meaning "good friend" or "gallant comrade" (from the Dutch "boel," brother). That's the same "bully," by the way, that turns up in modern English in a twisted form meaning "tyrannical thug." On the bright side, it also served as President Theodore Roosevelt's favorite expression ("Bully!"), by which he meant "excellent" or "bravo!"