darky

From dark +‎ -y.

darky (countable and uncountable, plural darkies)

1. (countable) Alternative spelling of darkey (“dark-skinned person”).
   • 1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC; republished New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1944, →OCLC, part I, page 17:

     He’s a small farmer, not a big planter, and if the boys thought enough of him to elect him lieutenant, then it’s not for any darky to talk impudent about him.

2. (countable) Alternative spelling of darkey (“dark lantern”).
3. (thieves' cant, obsolete) The time of darkness: night or dusk.
   • 1761, The Discoveries of John Poulter, alias Baxter, etc. MS. notes, page 39:

     […] at Darky they buss them out of the Ground, that is, at Night they steal the Horses, then pike thirty or forty Straches that Darky, that is go thirty or forty Miles that Night, towards the next Gaff to fence them, […]

• (twilight): John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary