honky

• honkey, honkie

Sense of “factory hand” attested from 1946. Compare hunky, bohunk.

Term of racial abuse attested 1967, most likely from hunky, an African-American vernacular shortening of Hungarian.

Another possible etymon is the Wolof word honq (red, pink), a term frequently used in African languages to describe white men.[1]

• Rhymes: -ɒŋki

honky (plural honkies)

1. (Canada, US, derogatory, ethnic slur) A Caucasian person.
2. (US, obsolete) A factory hand or general unskilled worker.

• (white person): Thesaurus:white person

• hunky, hunkey

• “honky” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.