"Bloke" etymology (speculative at best)

[Jonathon Green]

My thanks to Doug Wilson for his thoughts on 'bloke/gloak'. FWIW, the link
to the assumed 'Hindi' loke appears, as noted in the OED - whence I, and I
would assume Partridge copied it - as suggested by 'Ogilvie', i.e. J.
Ogilvie, The Imperial Dictionary (1855; rev. by Annandale 1883 - the rev.
edn became the basis of the Century Dict. of 1889). I note his superior
knowledge - my etymology has been amended. As to the gloak > bloke link,
it may or may not be relevant that the earliest cites I have unearthed
(1830s-50s) spell it 'bloak'. (That said, the mutability of slang
transcription can never be underestimated). My only other thought is that
while the link to 'block' is appealing, the sense of bloke has, at least
in the UK, never been 'stupid' or 'blockish'. Instead, when it doesn't
simply mean 'man', it is cognate with the modern 'lad' (as in contemporary
UK 'lad culture', 'ladettes' etc. and in the earlier 'Jack-the-lad'), i.e.
macho, hail-fellow-well-met, generally working-class masculinity.

Jonathon Gree