Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One of the free-soil guerrillas in Kansas and Missouri during the border disputes of 1854 to 1859.
  • noun A Unionist guerrilla.
  • noun Informal A native or resident of Kansas.

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

  • noun An abolitionist raider in the Kansas-Missouri border skirmishes during the American Civil War
  • noun a robber or bandit

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From jayhawk, a fictitious bird.]

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Examples

  • The way he talks of it, the term might have been a colloquial term applied to a jayhawker or a patroller.

    Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 Work Projects Administration

  • He was a merciless and most unscrupulous jayhawker ....

    With Sabre and Scalpel. The Autobiography of a Soldier and Surgeon John Allan 1914

  • "Skedaddle, you damn jayhawker," was his cavalier farewell.

    Oh, You Tex! William MacLeod Raine 1912

  • We may further restrict the field by saying that nowhere on any border was animosity so fierce as in western Missouri and eastern Kansas, where jayhawker and border ruffian waged a guerrilla war for years before the nation was arrayed against itself in ordered ranks.

    The Story of the Outlaw A Study of the Western Desperado Emerson Hough 1890

  • The black flags of Quantrell and of Lane, of border ruffian and jayhawker, were guidons under which quarter was unknown, and mercy a forgotten thing.

    The Story of the Outlaw A Study of the Western Desperado Emerson Hough 1890

  • Jennison, the Kansas jayhawker leader, in one of his raids into Missouri, burned the houses of Younger and confiscated the horses in his livery stables.

    The Story of the Outlaw A Study of the Western Desperado Emerson Hough 1890

  • Left were only the "citizen" with his family and slaves, the post quartermaster and commissary, the conscript-officer, the trading Jew, the tax-in-kind collector, the hiding deserter, the jayhawker, a few wounded boys on furlough, and Harper's cavalry.

    Kincaid's Battery George Washington Cable 1884

  • Ferry-Durand has got a great public career before him, 's's he,' and no true friend will let him think of taking a wife who is all history and no antecedents, a blockade-runner, a spy, and the brand-new widow of a blackguard and a jayhawker she had run away from practically on her wedding-night. '

    The Cavalier George Washington Cable 1884

  • "Three times I came near capturing the gallant jayhawker chief, and once he actually captured _me_, but didn't know me and let me go, because he said he was hot on Redpath's trail and couldn't afford to waste time and rope on inconsequential small fry."

    Chapters from My Autobiography Mark Twain 1872

  • Our friend and guide seemed to have been a jayhawker and mountain marauder -- on the right side.

    On Horseback Charles Dudley Warner 1864

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