[Ads-l] Antedating of "Honky" (African-American Term for White Person)

[Shapiro, Fred]

honky (OED, 2., 1967 [10 Apr.])

1967 Nashville Tennessean 25 Mar. 1/7 (ProQuest)

[Report of remarks by Stokley Carmichael:]  The honkies (whites) are fixing to try to keep us from speaking over here at Vanderbilt.

NOTE:  Green's Dictionary of Slang includes a 1935 citation of "Hunkie," but I believe this is an instance of the word, derived from "Bohunk," referring to blue-collar Eastern European immigrants.  Both Green and the Historical Dictionary of American Slang include a 1946 citation of "Honky" from Mezz Mezzrow's book Really the Blues, but this is clearly an instance of the blue-collar Eastern-European immigrant term.  Mezzrow explicitly glossed the word as meaning "factory hand," as acknowledged by Lighter in HDAS.

Fred Shapiro



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