Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun US, obsolete, slang A northerner who sympathized with the South or wanted to end hostilities during the American Civil War.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

After the dangerous copperhead snake, to which propagandists of the Republican Party compared Democrats interested in appeasement.

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Examples

  • If they had abandoned the pursuit of an impossible attainment and the policy of hindering the President and Congress in the exercise of their prerogatives, there would still have remained scope for a healthy opposition which would not have left the name Copperhead-Democrat a reproach for so many years; in truth, the Democrats might have deserved well of the muse of history.

    Chapter XI 1917

  • The only place on earth, I suppose, where they could feel reasonably at home was in that gosh-awful nowhere that we called Copperhead Camp.

    West Wind Drift George Barr McCutcheon 1897

  • Viking calls theirs the Rauch and is a smoked Oktober although they also have the Vienna and the Copperhead, which is an amber lager, but doesn't appear to be available in Madison.

    Oktoberfest #1 - Day 1 Sample A (Sprecher) 2007

  • "Copperhead" added Allie, who, along with David, was now standing behind Margie on the porch, looking on with interest.

    MORE FROM GINNY BATES: ALLIE Maggie Jochild 2007

  • He spent the last decade of his life jamming with other Bay Area musicians in various aggregations named "Copperhead," "The Dinosaurs," "Thunder & Lightning," etc.

    Archive 2005-06-05 Michael Evans 2005

  • He spent the last decade of his life jamming with other Bay Area musicians in various aggregations named "Copperhead," "The Dinosaurs," "Thunder & Lightning," etc.

    View from the Northern Border Michael Evans 2005

  • Destroy or delay enemy forces at fixing obstacles using massed fires or pinpoint munitions (such as Copperhead rounds).

    FM 71-1 Chapter 4 Defensive Operations United States Army 1998

  • In fact, was there ever so wicked a farce as this "Copperhead" complaint about the denial of the right of free speech and free votes, from the lips of men whose daily exemption from punishment proves the falsity of their appeals to popular prejudice?

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863 Various

  • Open any newspaper of "Copperhead" complexion, and tell me, candidly, if you can approve of the manner in which the all-engrossing questions of the day are discussed.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863 Various

  • The 'Copperhead' districts of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are the old Tory districts of the Revolution.

    The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 Devoted To Literature And National Policy Various

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