peckerwood

noun

1. (Appalachia, Southern-US, slang)A woodpecker.

   “On the morning of the next, one of Mr. White's daughters came into the house to inform me that there was a "peckerwood" in a tree in the yard. I immediately took my gun and went out to investigate thinking that perhaps it was a Pileolated Woodpecker, a bird I wanted to obtain.”

   “When I was a boy, I rooted over an old dead sourwood to get some peckerwood eggs.”

   “There was nothing but a peckerwood on an oak tree.”

2. (Appalachia, Southern-US)A peckerwood sawmill.

   “Throughout this territory are mills of every variety and size, from the small "peckerwood" tractor mill capable of cutting only a few thousand feet of lumber per day to the world's largest pine lumber mill with a capacity of more than one million feet per day.”

   “The Langdale Company's new centralized sawmill and debarker in 1958 constituted a tremendous advance over the old peckerwood technology.”

3. (US, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur)A white person, especially a Southerner, or one who is ignorant, rustic, or bigoted.

   “All the time I was stretched out on the infirmary cot I kept looking at the blank walls and seeing the mean, murdering faces of those Southern peckerwoods when they went after Big Six and the others with their knives.”

   “Just as prejudiced as a Mississippi peckerwood when it comes to colored people.”

4. (slang)A white (male) inmate, especially one who is racist or who is a member of a race-based prison gang.