Pikey
Encyclopedia
Pikey is a pejorative
slang
term used mainly in the United Kingdom to refer to Irish Traveller
s, gypsies or people of low social class. Pikey is also sometimes called a piker
in the United States
, but a piker in Australia and New Zealand means someone who refuses to do something within a group.
appears to be a very old English word, remaining near unchanged, probably in common use during William Shakespeare
's lifetime. The text Gypsy Politics and Social Change notes Boorde's 1547 reference:
The term is strongly associated with itinerant life and constant travel: pikey is directly derived from pike which, circa 1520, meant to "go away from, to go on" and related to the words turnpike (toll-road) and pike-man (toll-collector)
in 1837 writes disparagingly of itinerant pike-keepers
The Oxford English Dictionary
traced the earliest use of "pikey" to The Times
in August 1838, which referred to strangers who had come to the Isle of Sheppey
as "pikey-men". In 1847, J. O. Halliwell in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words recorded the use of "pikey" to mean a gypsy. In 1887, W. D. Parish and W. F. Shaw in the Dictionary of Kentish Dialect recorded the use of the word to mean "a turnpike traveller; a vagabond; and so generally a low fellow".
Thomas Acton's Gypsy Politics and Social Change notes John Camden Hotten
's Slang Dictionary (1887) as similarly stating:
The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society similarly agrees the term pikey solely applied (negatively) to Gypsies
In 1937, then-Senator Harry S Truman compared the financiers
of the 1930s
, whom he called "pikers", to bank robber
Jesse James
.
Pikey remained, as of 1989, common prison slang for Romani people or those who have a (perceived) similar lifestyle of itinerant unemployment and travel.
More recently, pikey was applied to Irish Travellers (also known as tinker
s and knacker
s) and non-Roma Gypsies. In the late 20th century, it came to be used to describe "a lower-class person, regarded as coarse or disreputable."
Pikey's most common contemporary use is not as a term for the Gypsy ethnic group, but as a catch-all phrase to refer to people, of any ethnic group, who travel around with no fixed abode
.
Among English Romani Gypsies the term pikey refers to a Traveller that is not Romani. It may also refer to a member who has been cast out of the family. If a member of the family is hot headed or a thief or a trouble maker or brings misfortune on the family, then a family council will be held and that member will be cast out of the family and will have to stay out of the way for ever more. They are regarded as never having even been a part of the family.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the definition became even looser and is sometimes used to refer to a wide section of the (generally urban
) underclass of the country (in England generally known as chav
s), or merely a person of any social class who "lives on the cheap" such as a bohemian
.
Negative English attitudes towards "pikeys" were a running theme in the 2000 Guy Ritchie
film Snatch. In 2003 the Firle
Bonfire Society burned an effigy of a family of gypsies inside a caravan after travelers damaged local land. The number plate on the caravan read P1KEY. A storm of protests and accusations of racism rapidly followed. Twelve members of the society were arrested but the Crown Prosecution Service
decided that there was insufficient evidence to proceed on a charge of 'incitement to racial hatred'.
The Oxford History of English notes that:
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
term used mainly in the United Kingdom to refer to Irish Traveller
Irish Traveller
Irish Travellers are a traditionally nomadic people of ethnic Irish origin, who maintain a separate language and set of traditions. They live predominantly in the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States.-Etymology:...
s, gypsies or people of low social class. Pikey is also sometimes called a piker
Piker
Piker may refer to:*Miranda Piker, a character cut from the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl before publicationPiker may also be:*Miser*Pikey*Vagrant...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, but a piker in Australia and New Zealand means someone who refuses to do something within a group.
16th Century
The term pikey as a pejorativePejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
appears to be a very old English word, remaining near unchanged, probably in common use during William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's lifetime. The text Gypsy Politics and Social Change notes Boorde's 1547 reference:
Egipcions be swarte and doth go disgsy'd in theyr apparel, contrary to other nacyons: they be lyght fyngered, and use pyking.
Gypsies are swarthy and go disguised in their apparel, contrary to other nations: they are light-fingered and use piking.
The term is strongly associated with itinerant life and constant travel: pikey is directly derived from pike which, circa 1520, meant to "go away from, to go on" and related to the words turnpike (toll-road) and pike-man (toll-collector)
19th-century
Charles DickensCharles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
in 1837 writes disparagingly of itinerant pike-keepers
The Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
traced the earliest use of "pikey" to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
in August 1838, which referred to strangers who had come to the Isle of Sheppey
Isle of Sheppey
The Isle of Sheppey is an island off the northern coast of Kent, England in the Thames Estuary, some to the east of London. It has an area of . The island forms part of the local government district of Swale...
as "pikey-men". In 1847, J. O. Halliwell in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words recorded the use of "pikey" to mean a gypsy. In 1887, W. D. Parish and W. F. Shaw in the Dictionary of Kentish Dialect recorded the use of the word to mean "a turnpike traveller; a vagabond; and so generally a low fellow".
Thomas Acton's Gypsy Politics and Social Change notes John Camden Hotten
John Camden Hotten
John Camden Hotten was an English bibliophile and publisher.Hotten was born in Clerkenwell, London to a family of Cornish origins. He spent the period 1848–1856 in America and on his return opened a small bookshop in London at 151a Piccadilly, and founded the publishing firm later known as Chatto...
's Slang Dictionary (1887) as similarly stating:
Hotten's dictionary of slang gives pike at as go away and Pikey as a tramp or a Gypsy. He continues a pikey-cart is, in various parts of the country, one of those habitable vehicles suggestive of country life. Possibly the term has some reference to those who continually use the pike or turnpike road.
The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society similarly agrees the term pikey solely applied (negatively) to Gypsies
Contemporary usage
The connotation and linkage of gypsies to petty theft, crime and general low socioeconomic activities is well-entrenched, as the text Understanding Representation states:
"Pikey is one of the negative words associated with gypsies: people who fight and steal equals 'pikeys'. It includes fortune-tellers such as the famous Gypsy Rose Lee..."
In 1937, then-Senator Harry S Truman compared the financiers
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
of the 1930s
1930s
File:1930s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: Dorothea Lange's photo of the homeless Florence Thompson show the effects of the Great Depression; Due to the economic collapse, the farms become dry and the Dust Bowl spreads through America; The Battle of Wuhan during the Second Sino-Japanese...
, whom he called "pikers", to bank robber
Bank robbery
Bank robbery is the crime of stealing from a bank during opening hours. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, robbery is "the taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force or threat of...
Jesse James
Jesse James
Jesse Woodson James was an American outlaw, gang leader, bank robber, train robber, and murderer from the state of Missouri and the most famous member of the James-Younger Gang. He also faked his own death and was known as J.M James. Already a celebrity when he was alive, he became a legendary...
.
Pikey remained, as of 1989, common prison slang for Romani people or those who have a (perceived) similar lifestyle of itinerant unemployment and travel.
More recently, pikey was applied to Irish Travellers (also known as tinker
Tinker
A tinker was originally an itinerant tinsmith, who mended household utensils. The term "tinker" became used in British society to refer to marginalized persons...
s and knacker
Knacker
A knacker is a person in the trade of rendering animals that are unfit for human consumption, such as horses that can no longer work. This leads to the slang expression "knackered" meaning very tired, or "ready for the knacker’s yard", where old horses are slaughtered and made into dog food and glue...
s) and non-Roma Gypsies. In the late 20th century, it came to be used to describe "a lower-class person, regarded as coarse or disreputable."
Pikey's most common contemporary use is not as a term for the Gypsy ethnic group, but as a catch-all phrase to refer to people, of any ethnic group, who travel around with no fixed abode
No fixed abode
No fixed abode or without fixed abode is a legal term generally applied to those who do not have a fixed geographical location as their residence...
.
Among English Romani Gypsies the term pikey refers to a Traveller that is not Romani. It may also refer to a member who has been cast out of the family. If a member of the family is hot headed or a thief or a trouble maker or brings misfortune on the family, then a family council will be held and that member will be cast out of the family and will have to stay out of the way for ever more. They are regarded as never having even been a part of the family.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the definition became even looser and is sometimes used to refer to a wide section of the (generally urban
Urban area
An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
) underclass of the country (in England generally known as chav
Chav
A chav is a term that is used in the United Kingdom to describe a stereotype of teenagers and young adults from an underclass background.-Etymology:...
s), or merely a person of any social class who "lives on the cheap" such as a bohemian
Bohemian
A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...
.
Negative English attitudes towards "pikeys" were a running theme in the 2000 Guy Ritchie
Guy Ritchie
Guy Stuart Ritchie is an English screenwriter and film maker who directed Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Revolver, RocknRolla and Sherlock Holmes.-Early life:...
film Snatch. In 2003 the Firle
Firle
For the suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, see Firle, South Australia.Firle is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. Firle refers to an old-English/Anglo-Saxon word fierol meaning overgrown with oak...
Bonfire Society burned an effigy of a family of gypsies inside a caravan after travelers damaged local land. The number plate on the caravan read P1KEY. A storm of protests and accusations of racism rapidly followed. Twelve members of the society were arrested but the Crown Prosecution Service
Crown Prosecution Service
The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, is a non-ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for public prosecutions of people charged with criminal offences in England and Wales. Its role is similar to that of the longer-established Crown Office in Scotland, and the...
decided that there was insufficient evidence to proceed on a charge of 'incitement to racial hatred'.
The Oxford History of English notes that:
"young people who use charver or pikey to identify a contemporary style of dress or general demeanour suggest an aimless "street" lifestyle, unaware of the Romany origin of the first or of connotation with "gypsy" of the second.
Pikey, formed from turnpike roads, as along with pikee and piker been used in the South East [of EnglandEnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
] especially since the mid-Nineteenth-Century to refer to itinerant people of all kinds and been used by travelling people to refer to those of low caste. Scally a corresponding label originating in the North West of England was taken up by the media and several websites, only to be superseded by chav.
A very recent survey has unearthed 127 synonyms, with ned favoured in Scotland, charver in North East England and pikey across the South [of England].