honky
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honky
Rhymes with -ɒŋki
Where it comes from
Sense of “factory hand” attested from 1946. Compare hunky, bohunk.
Most likely from hunky (“Hungarian, Slav, eastern European; any white person”), an African-American vernacular shortening of Hungarian. Another possible etymon is Wolof xonq (“red, pink”), a term frequently used in African languages to describe white men.
As a term of racial abuse it was popularized by the Black Panther Party starting from 1967, who sought a rebuttal to nigger.
noun honkies · honkey · honkie
- A white (Caucasian) person. For quotations using this term, see Citations:honky.
- A factory hand or general unskilled worker.
