Dixie

n.
Any one of several songs bearing this name, popular as Confederate war songs.

idiom:

whistle Dixie Slang.

1. To engage in unrealistically rosy fantasizing: "If you think mass transportation is going to replace the automobile I think you're whistling Dixie" (Henry Ford II).

[After DIXIE¹.]

The song "Dixie" traditionally is attributed to the white minstrel violinist Daniel Decatur Emmett. An immediate popular hit in 1859, "Dixie" was adopted—with new lyrics by General Albert Pike—as the Confederate anthem during the Civil War. A century later "Dixie" became inextricable from the massive resistance of white southerners to the civil rights movement. However, historical affiliations of "Dixie" with blackface minstrelsy and white southern racism have been complicated by late-twentieth-century scholarship associating the song with African American neighbors of Emmett in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

The standard account is that Emmett wrote "Dixie"—originally entitled "I Wish I Was in Dixie's Land"—for Bryant's Minstrels, who with Emmett himself on violin, premiered the song on Broadway on 4 April 1859. The etymology of the word "Dixie" is highly debatable: it has been traced to a slaveholder named Dixey; to "dix," a ten-dollar note issued in Louisiana; and to the Mason-Dixon Line. Emmett himself commented that "Dixie" was a showman's term for the black South. Hence, many scholars have interpreted Emmett's song as an inauthentic and racist product of northern minstrelsy. By contrast, critics interrogating Emmett's authorship of "Dixie" have usually questioned how a man from Ohio could have come into contact with the southern black culture evoked in the song. However, Howard and Judith Sacks have demonstrated, in Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem (1993), that Emmett could have learned "Dixie" from the Snowdens, an African American family of musicians resident in Emmett's hometown, Mount Vernon. Their book further argues that the original lyrics of "Dixie" may be the semi-autobiographical account of Ellen Snowden, formerly a slave in Maryland.

Bibliography

Nathan, Hans. Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

Sacks, Howard L., and Judith Rose Sacks. Way up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.

—Martyn Bone

Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: (British) a large metal pot (12 gallon camp kettle) for cooking; used in military camps

---

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - campingkogekar

Français (French)
n. - (GB, Mil) gamelle (arg)

n. - (US) Etats du Sud
adj. - (US) du Sud

idioms:

• whistle dixie    se laisser aller/s'adonner à des fantaisies optimistes mais irréalistes

Deutsch (German)
n. - Südstaaten der Vereinigten Staaten, (Mus.) Dixie, Kochkessel

n. - Südstaaten der USA
adj. - den Südstaaten angehörig, für die Südstaaten charakteristisch

idioms:

• whistle dixie    sich etwas gönnen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - καζάνι μαγειρέματος ή συσσιτίου

Italiano (Italian)
pentola di ferro, gli Stati del Sud

Português (Portuguese)
n. - caldeirão (m)

Русский (Russian)
южные штаты США, джаз

Español (Spanish)
n. - marmita, olla, nombre dado a los estados del sur (EE.UU.)

n. - estados del sur de los Estados Unidos
adj. - sureño

idioms:

• whistle dixie    tener fantasías optimistas irreales.

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - mil. kokkärl, pappersbägare

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
美国南部各州, 迪西兰

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 美國南部各州, 迪西蘭

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 큰 냄비

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 米国南部諸州, ディクシー
adj. - 米国南部諸州の

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮קדרה, סיר ברזל גדול לבישול, המדינות הדרום-מזרחיות של ארה"ב‬
n. - ‮המדינות הדרום-מזרחיות של ארה"ב‬
adj. - ‮אופייני למדינות דרום-מזרח ארה"ב, מהמדינות הנ"ל‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.

To select your translation preferences click here.

dixie chicks	dixie chicks tickets
dixie outfitters