Pike, n.10 N. Amer. dial.
(paɪk)
[f. Pike County, Missouri, whence the first of these persons are said to have come to California.]
Term of contempt on the Pacific coast for a person of no means or of migratory habits; a poor white; a thief. Cf. Piker4. Also as adj.
| 1854 G. H. Derby in Pioneer (San Francisco) June 379 A tall yellow-haired, sun-burned Pike, in the butternut-colored hat, coat and so forths ‘of the period’. 1860 C. W. Wilson Mapping Frontier (1970) ii. 126 There are about 350 inhabitants, miners, gamblers, sharpers, Jews, Pikes, Yankees, loafers & hoc genus omne. 1863 Harper's Mag. June 25/2 Society in San José is decidedly ‘Pike’ in its character. 1872 C. Nordhoff California xi. 138 The true Pike, however, in the Californian sense of the word, is the wandering, gipsy-like southern poor white. 1928 R. W. Ritchie Hell Roarin' Forty-Niners xv. 234 This Pike had an imagination and a devilishly sly humor which would qualify him to-day for one of our highly specialized lines of salesmanship. 1946 St. Louis (Missouri) Globe-Democrat 17 Nov. e 2/6 The term ‘Pike’ or ‘piker’, in the sense of a worthless, lazy, good-for-nothing person arose first in California in the days of the Forty-Niners. |