"Ofay" etymology (speculative)

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 03:40:16PM -0400, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
> Quoted by Barry Popik:
> >
> >  [1898 Freeman (Indianapolis) 8 Oct. 5/1 ‘Ofay’ Brooks sends regards
> >to ‘
> >Snapper’ Edmonds.] 1899 Freeman (Indianapolis) 2 Sept. 5/5 London
> >Letter... All
> >the boys seem to like this side of th [sic] water... ‘Jiw-wauks’ are
> >scarce,
> >but ‘O-fays’ are plentiful.

[...]

> The 1899 citation also fails to show the sense of "O-fay". If I knew what
> was meant by a "Jiw-wauk" I might be able to guess what was meant by an
> "O-fay".

HDAS s.v. _jig-walk_ has extensive evidence for the sense 'a black person';
while the first cite is from the 1920s, some of the cites refer to times as
early as the 1890s. It seems pretty clear to me that _jiw-wauk_ is some
kind of typo or variant of _jig-walk_.

> Is more extensive context available? Superficially it does not
> seem natural that a visitor to London (England) would write home that there
> were plenty of white people there, but maybe this makes sense in the
> overall context.

This is a black musician, writing home to black colleagues about a visit
to London. Saying "Blacks are scarce, but whites are plentiful" doesn't
seem remotely controversial or ambiguous here. I don't think there's any
question at all that this 1899 cite represents _ofay_ in our sense.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED