Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) pertaining to a country dweller, a peasant, esp. a southern US poor farmer who is stupid and racist.

1907		Edgefield Advertiser (SC) 25 Sept. 1/6: he was helf up by a red-necked farmer armed with a shot gun [...] and swearing a blue streak.
1911		Bisbee Dly Rev. (AZ) 30 May 8/6: Our army and naval officers are as fine a set of gentlemen as the world ever saw, and the majority of them are made in a few years from the rough-head, red-necked raw material.
1928		C. McKay Home to Harlem 169: He knew that his father was some red-necked white man who had despised his mother’s race and had done nothing for him.
1948		Dan Burley ‘Back Door Stuff’ 20 Nov. [synd. col.] You don’t want the redneck conductor moistening your shirt front with tobaccy juice.
1962		J. Blake letter 12 Oct. in Joint (1972) 192: The bad manners and Crow Jim attitude of the black musicians in New York outdoes anything I saw in the redneck South.
1969		H. Rap Brown Die Nigger Die! 38: You come back here and kill one racist, red-necked, honky, camel-breathed peckerwood who’s been misusing you and your people all your life and that’s murder.
1970		T. Southern Blue Movie (1974) 11: What did they care about a handful of red-neck religious-nut hunkies.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 39: Taking over all the night action [...] of an entire redneck town — that was something big.
1998		D. Clowes Ghost World 64: Fuck you, you stupid redneck hick!
2004		Mad mag. Jan. 46: Redneck, socially regressed, backwater states like Alabama.
2005		P. Temple Broken Shore (2007) [ebook] I’m standing [for election] to give some choice in this redneck town.
2010		K. Richards Life 4: A conservative, redneck southern community not happy to welcome different-looking strangers.
2013		F. Bill Donnybrook [ebook] ‘This is what I like to call a redneck flytrap’.
2020		D. Winslow ‘Broken’ in Broken 11: Selling to redneck bayou trash.

2. (US) Irish.

1952

(con. 1948) G. Mandel Flee the Angry Strangers 385: It was Timmy who told of the frisk, the pinch by two red-necked bulls.