or pickaninny, pinkaninny, &c., subs. (colloquial).—A baby; a child: specifically (modern) a child of negro parents. [Originally from PINK (an endearment)—small: see PIGSNEY.]—GROSE (1785).

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  1696.  D’URFEY, Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719), i. 283.

        Dear PINCKANINNY, if half a Guinny,
To Love will win ye,
I lay it here down.

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  1855.  HALIBURTON (‘Sam Slick’), Nature and Human Nature, 59. Let me see one of you dare to lay hands on this PICKANINNY.

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  1865.  H. KINGSLEY, The Hillyars and the Burtons, xxviii. Five-and-forty black fellows, lubras, PICANINNIES, and all, at my heels.

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  1879.  F. LOCKER-LAMPSON The Old Cradle.

        You were an exceedingly small PICANINNY
  Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago.

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  1883.  Harper’s Magazine [Century], lxxvi. 809. A poor puny little PICKANINNY, black as the ace of spades.

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