Entry · catalog no. 7023
buckra
/ /ˈbʌkrə/ /BUHK-ruh
n. · Gullah-Geechee, SC/GA Lowcountry · 1790s
✓ Verified
1.
A white person, sometimes specifically a poor white person. An in-group term of the Gullah-Geechee and wider Black South.
“The old folks still called the landlord a buckra.”
Origin & Attribution
From mbakara, the Efik and Ibibio word of southern Nigeria meaning "white man" — literally "he who surrounds or governs." Enslaved Africans carried it to the Sea Islands, where it survives in Gullah as buckra. Attested in American and Caribbean English by 1790, it named the master class from the inside; over time it narrowed, in some mouths, to a poor white. A word that let Black people name their namers.
1790
Attested in American and Caribbean English
1949
Documented as a Gullah Africanism by linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner
present
Chiefly historical and regional (Gullah-Geechee)
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Gullah-Geechee, SC/GA Lowcountry · 1790s
Spoken by
Gullah-Geechee; Black South
$BUCKRAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded236 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
40/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1790
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect
1949
■
+ Cite a sourceEtymology: Efik/Ibibio mbakara ('white man; he who governs')
1790
See also