honky
nounEtymology 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.
1
Canada, US, Derogatory, Ethnic, Slur A white (Caucasian) person.
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:honky.
- Related terms
- honky tonk