Colloquial (often disparaging) term for an American. Outside the USA the term is applied to any American.
During the American Civil War, the term was applied by Southerners to any Northerner or member of the Union Army and is still used today to refer to Northerners. A real yankee is a person from the New England states, especially someone descended from a colonial founding family. The word has come to connote craftiness and business acumen, as in yankee ingenuity.
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