Passage 3The origin of “Yankee” has eluded researchers (etymologists still quarrel over its probablyderivation), but the generally accepted hypothesis contends that it is an Anglicized corruption of“Jan Kees”—or “John Cheese”—a pejorative term which the original Dutch settlers of NewAmsterdam (now New York) applied to Anglo-Americans living in the adjoining state ofConnecticut. After the collapse of the Dutch colony and the absorption of its inhabitants into theAmerican mainstream, the word “Yankee” lay dormant until just before the Revolution War. As illfeeling between the British and the Americans intensified, the British revived it as a label of ridiculefor those colonials demanding separation from the mother country. (As it happened, “Yankee”conformed, in this sense, to another American word originating at about the same time, the verb“yank,” which means “to wrench violently” or “to pull with a violent jerk.”) It is unlikely that bythis time the “John Cheese” meaning was remembered. Presumably it was a British surgeon whowrote the satirical song, “Yankee Doodle,” which lampooned the absurd incompetence of theAmerican militia as it organized to fight with the well-trained and disciplined British army assignedto put down the rebellion. But to everyone’s surprise, the Americans adopted “Yankee Doodle” astheir first battle hymn and national anthem. Americans silenced British satire by joining in thelaughter at themselves, by adding hundreds of stanzas of their own, and by turning a fictive  American bumpkin named “Yankee Doodle” into a low-comedy figure unwilling to be intimidatedby the formidable British lion. Thus the Yankee became the first of a long line of Americanantiheroes, a scorned “common man” of little talent and even less sophistication who turned thetables on the “establishment,” in this case, the empery of Great Britain. The democratic note wasstruck and would be heard many times again in American belletristic and political writing byLincoln, Twain, Whitman, or Emerson.
46. According to this passage, the word “Yankee” probably came from _____.
(A) French
(B) Old English
(C) Dutch
(D) German