mammy n.1
1. (US) the ideal black woman as stereotyped by whites; such women would typically be employed as nannies or cooks in white households; thus as v.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Travels in USA 86: Children of the most distinguished families in Carolina, are suckled by negro-women. Each child has its Momma. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Westward Ho! I 181: Come, come, mammy, stir these old stumps of yours, and get us something to eat. | |
| Georgia Scenes (1848) 47: He beset an old negro to sell him the half of a living chicken. ‘Do, my good mauma, sell it to me,’ said he. [Ibid.] 103: ‘There they are, aunt* Clary,’ said Evelina [*‘Aunt’ and ‘mauma,’ or ‘maum,’ its abbreviation, are terms of respect, commonly used by children, to aged negroes]. | |
| Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 14 Jan. n.p.: the whip wants to know Who those three squirts were who made such fools of themselves [...] Got to your mammies, go. | |
| Americanisms 152: It is comforting to turn from such a subject to the term of tenderness, by which the black nurse was, for so many generations, known to the children of the South. This used to be mammy, the same name formerly given in England to grandmothers, and by some derived from the Gypsy word Mami, which means grandmother. Even now many a Mammy is spending her declining years in the family of those whom she has nursed and reared. | |
| Tenting on the Plains (rev. edn 1895) 90: Eliza ‘mammied’ and nursed me. | |
| A New Mexico David 82: A queer dialect of Southwestern slang delivered with the Southern utterance learned from negro ‘mammies’. | |
| Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains (1903) 18: An old negro woman, far from being the revered and beloved ‘Black Mammy,’ [...] was simply a hideous black tyrant. | |
| Northerner 69: Still, let us leave out the ‘black mammies,’ and the old-time ‘body-servants’. | |
| Zone Policeman 88 108: The wives of locomotive engineers and steam-shovel cranemen were not infrequently supercilious ladies who [...] lacked the training in politeness of Jamaican ‘mammies’. | |
| Negro Workaday Songs 117: Missus in de big house, / Mammy in de yard. / Missus holdin’ her white hands, / Mammy workin’ hard. | |
| God Sends Sun. 189: Damn yo’ black mammy, nigger. I’m a mind to lump you for dat lie. | |
| ‘All God’s Chillun Got Pride’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 27: He could even put up with their ‘mammies’; their dear old ‘black mammies’ who raised them. | |
| Walk on the Wild Side 185: ‘Mammy,’ I told her, ‘you waited on me, I’m goin’ to wait on you. I’m takin’ care of my old black mammy.’. | |
| Pop. 1280 in Four Novels (1983) 378: I was put to suck with a colored mammy. | |
| ‘The New Ships’ in Arrivants 124: Mammies crowded with cloths, / flowered and laughed. | |
| Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 48: mammy [also maumer. 19th century or earlier. Also niggermammy]. | |
| Conversation with the Mann 38: The only black faces projected on the screen belonged to subservient mammies and backward natives. | |
| Boy from County Hell 290: The old mammies had polished the wood to a gleam. |
2. (UK Und.) the madam of a brothel.
| Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc. 5: Aunt a bawd or old procuress, or hanger-on upon wh?s ; sometimes called Mammy or Mother. | |
| Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 14 May n.p.: Old Mammy St Clair, the ‘voman vot haint vite’. |
In compounds
(US black) the scarf or similar cloth that is used to bind up one’s newly straightened hair.
| ‘Gang Members & the Police’ in Bordua Police 80: [note] Head scarves (sometimes called ‘mammy rags’) are worn by Negroes around the forehead to keep ‘conk jobs’ in place. |
(US) a prostitute’s (white) customer whose sexual tastes demand women who resemble motherly black women.
| Walk on the Wild Side 180: How could anybody but another mammy-freak know how a mammy-freak feels. |