Hoosier

An inhabitant of Indiana. (This word is unaccountably omitted from the N.E.D.)

1659.  Torriano, in his Dictionary, has “Ninnatrice, a rocker, a stiller, a luller, a whoosher or a dandier of children asleep.” (N.E.D., s.v. Hush.)

1833.  There was a long-haired “hooshier” from Indiana.—C. F. Hoffman, ‘A Winter in the Far West,’ i. 207 (Lond.).

1833.  I am now in the land of the Hooshiers, and find that long-haired race more civilized than some of their western neighbours are willing to represent them. The term “Hooshier,” like that of Yankee, or Buck-eye, first applied contemptuously, has now become a soubriquet, that bears nothing invidious with it to the ear of an Indianian.—Id., i. 223.

1835.  [These boats are] manned (I have not understood whether they are officered or not) by “real Kentucks”—“Buck eyes”—“Hooshers”—and “Snorters.”—Ingraham, ‘The South-West,’ i. 105.

1836.  The Illinoisans are called Suckers, the inhabitants of Indiana Hoosiers, and those of Ohio Buckeyes.—Phila. Public Ledger, Oct. 14.

1839.  The Hoosier State has reason to rejoice in the amount and value of its waters.—‘Sketches of Iowa,’ &c., by John Plumbe, p. 46 (St. Louis).

1840.  Why have we witnessed manifestations of what must here, I suppose, be called chivalry, but which, in the hoosier State, the boys would call gostration?—Mr. Wick of Indiana, House of Repr., July 20: Cong. Globe, p. 545.

1840.  People in the Atlantic States know as little about the high and beating heart of the Mississippi Valley, as we Buckeyes, Corn-crackers, and Hooshiers do about Nova Zembla.—Cincinn. Chronicle, Aug. 26.

1841.  Far in the stern [of the steamer at New Orleans] you see flitting about, three or four gentle hoosiers, or buckeye fair ones.—‘Arcturus’ (N.Y.), ii. 53 (June).

1841.  Mr. Howard (of Michigan) has gone clear out of the land of the Yankees, and has got a good deal of the Hoosier in him.—Mr. Kennedy of Indiana, House of Repr., June 30: Cong. Globe, p. 132.

1843.  Give me a horse and the life, activity and health of Hoosiers and Hoosierinas let loose all at once in the whirligig storm and fury of that morning’s starting!—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase,’ ii. 97.

1844.  I was met by a dame of goodly proportions, surrounded by some ten or twelve young Hoosiers and Hooshierina’s, all nearly of a size, with long yellow hair, [and] a peculiarly wolfish expression about the mouth and eyes, while their faces and persons afforded a fair index of the color and depth of the soil.—Yale Lit. Mag., ix. 264 (April).

1846.  A raw Hooshier girl, who had been our fellow passenger from Louisville.—E. W. Farnham, ‘Life in Prairie Land,’ p. 17.

1846.  

  As the Hoosier belle apostrophized her corset, on learning that the article had gone out of fashion.—‘The Cincinnati Miscellany,’ ii. 352.

1848.  [The female teachers] make good wives; and they look “so almighty slick,” that they will soon be released from school-teaching, by being called to preside over the houses of young Hoosiers.… I have spoken the result of our political lucubrations in Hoosierland.—Mr. Wick of Indiana, House of Repr., April 25: Cong. Globe, p. 668.

1848.  In the West, every political thingumderry … takes up your song, and does his little best to produce confusion in Hoosierdom, in hopes at least to minister to the spleen of him of Kinderhook [Martin Van Buren].—The same, Aug. 7: id., p. 1119, App.

1852.  Among the passengers in the cabin was H., a would-be wag, and a live Hoosier, fresh from the swamps and bogs of Indiana.—‘Rousing a Hoosier,’ Daily Morning Herald, St. Louis, Dec. 22.

1853.  He looks like a Hoosieroon; all he lacks is a chunk of gingerbread in his fist.—Id., April 27.

1853.  A. big double-fisted Hoosier, with a huge pair of yellow whiskers, gray eyes, and long flowing soap-locks, [a] straddle of an old mare, with a sheepskin for a saddle.—Olympia (W.T.) Columbian, July 2.

1855.  We can cap the climax by a leaf from our Hoosier reminiscences.—Chicago Tribune, n.d.

1856.  He remained, after that, good English to the end of the dinner, only forgetting himself into Hoosier over the almonds and raisins.—Knick. Mag., xlviii. 407 (Dec.).

1861.  “O Lord, had the East done as well as the Hoosier State in furnishing men to put down this rebellion, we would not,” &c.—Utterance in a prayer-meeting at Logansport, Ind.: Cincinn. Gazette, Sept. 26.