Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also quashey, quashy) generic for a black person.

a.1790		C. Dibdin ‘Negro & his Banjer’ Collection of Songs II 88: So aunt Quashy say, / Do tabby, brown, or black, or white [...] Every sort of cat be gray.
1800		W.H. Murray Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack I i: Right, Quashee; and there’s a buckra man coming.
1811		Cobbett’s Wkly Register 30 Nov. 8/1: We almost blubber out loud at hearing recounted the sorrows of Cuffee and Quashee and their sable offspring.
1812		W.T.F. ‘Loyal Effusion’ in Smith Rejected Addresses 1: While Afric’s sons exclaim from shore to shore, / ‘Quashee ma boo!’ the slave trade is no more.
1821–6		‘Bill Truck’ Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 100: The old fellow’s a busy as a fly in a tar-bucket even now about Quashee; bedizening his little black bones.
1827		Hamel, Obeah Man II 231: Quashie does not like to abandon house and furniture, his pigs, his turkies, and his cocks and hens.
1833		M. Scott Tom Cringle’s Log (1862) 248: I say, Quashie, where are all [...] the artillery-men?
1839		T. Hood ‘Doves and the Crows’ Works (1862) IV 308: Quashy is garrulous as a starling.
1841		Hants Advertiser 7 Aug. 4/5: ‘You see, Massa Buccra, mass gib Quashie ten-penny-bit’.
1845		W.T. Porter Big Bear of Arkansas (1847) 89: Jerry was fished up by a darkey! and to show his gratitude, invited Quashey ‘to go up to the doggery and liquor’.
1849		Greenock Advertiser 11 Dec. 1/3: If Quashee will not honestly aid in bringing out those [...] products of the West Indian Islandsa [...] then I say neither will the Powers permit Quashee to cotinnue growing pumpkins there for his own lazy benefut.
1853		T. Carlyle Discourse on the Nigger Question 14: You can make a handsome glossy thing of Quashee, when the soul is not killed in him.
1859		G.A. Sala Twice Round the Clock 140: I don’t think it matters to Quashie, the negro slave, when he is beaten, whether the cowhide be wielded by Mr. Simon Legree [...] or by Quimbo.
1865		G.A. Sala Trip to Barbary 267: With Pompey, and Quashie [...] he perambulates the streets, thumping the tom-tom.
1866		Sportsman 22 Sept. 2/1: Notes on News [...] [T]he Gold Coast, where poor black Quashee will very kindly sell yon his mother-in-law for bottle of rum.
1873		C. Rampini Letters from Jamaica 88: The old African names [...] Quashie, cunning.
1879		C. Dickens Jr. Dict. London n.p.: A music hall, where Dolly Dripping, the cook, in a draggled old print gown and a huge (natural) moustache; and Corporal Coldmutton, of the Guards [...] make simple fun for the edification of Quashie and Sambo, whose shining ebony faces stand jovially out even against the grimy blackness of the walls.
1884		Bristol Magpie 5 Jan. 16/1: Black Quashee was a King of fame.
1886		Notts. Eve. Post 8 Sept. 2/3: ‘Quashie’ could procure by an hour’s lazy exertion all he wanted.
1894		G.A. Sala Things I Have Seen I 217: Most of that which I wrote about America [...] was tinted [...] by the shadow of Quashie.
1905		J.G. Cruickshank Negro Humour 78: Quashie or Cuffie.—Old African names applied to the Negro.
1910		Anderson & Cundall Jamaica Proverbs and Sayings 7: If you can ’t ketch quashie you ketch him shut [shirt].
1916		J.G. Cruickshank Black Talk 51: Daddy Quashie takes but little stock of time in its minute divisions.

2. (20C+ W.I., also quashi) a country bumpkin, a peasant, a stupid person; thus generic for the lower classes en masse; also as adj.

1834		Marryat Peter Simple (1911) 393: You, Quashee, how dare you look me in the face?
1912		C. McKay in Constab Ballads n.p.: [song title] Quashie to Buccra.
1933		(con. 1900s) C. McKay Banana Bottom 90: Breddah Halky switched his donkey. ‘Kui, hui, Quashee.’.
1950		Bennett, Clarke & Wilson Anancy Stories and Dialect Verse 101: quashi – fool.
1968		A. Salkey Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover (1982) 18: The Just Proletarian Destineers which is the party for the working class and poor Quashie.
1973		A. Salkey ‘Because of 1865’ Jamaica (1983) 46: You know, too, that / Quashie went to bed, / in the open, / on the banana trash.
1980		M. Thelwell Harder They Come 244: Quashie knew better than to mess with him!
1983		T. White Catch a Fire 145: Why dese quashie [foolish] boys don’ wear da dam strikin’ goggles hanging’ ’round deere strikin’ necks.
1995		Francis-Jackson Official Dancehall Dict. 42: Quashie idiot.
2000		N. Hopkinson Midnight Robber 63: That blasted Quashee. He constitution too damn weak.

3. (W.I.) a coward.

1976

L. Barrett Sun and the Drum 16: The Nagos also had a name of ridicule for the Ashantis; ‘Quashie’. In my community it refers to someone who is a coward, and calling someone by that name is an invitation to fight.