Pikey (; also spelled pikie, pykie) is a derogatory slang term referring to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. It is used mainly in the United Kingdom and in Ireland to refer to people who belong to groups which had a traditional travelling lifestyle. Groups referred to with this term include Irish Travellers, Romanichal, Welsh Kale, Scottish Lowland Travellers, Scottish Highland Travellers, and Funfair Travellers. These groups consider the term to be highly derogatory.

It is used by extension as a classist insult against marginalised working class communities, similar to the term chav.

Etymology

The term "pikey" is possibly derived from "pike" which, c. 1520, meant "highway" and is related to the words turnpike (toll road) and pikeman (toll collector). In Robert Henryson's Fable Collection (late 15th century), in the fable of the Two Mice, the thieving mice are referred to on more than one occasion as "pykeris":

<blockquote><poem>

And in the samin thay went, but mair abaid,

Withoutin fyre or candill birnand bricht

For commonly sic pykeris luffis not lycht.

And together they went, but more about,

without fire or candle burning bright

For commonly, such thieves do not like light.

</poem></blockquote>

19th century and 20th century

Charles Dickens in 1837 writes disparagingly of itinerant pike-keepers. In 1847, J. O. Halliwell in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words recorded the use of "pikey" to mean a gypsy.</blockquote>

The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society similarly agrees the term pikey solely applied (negatively) to Romani people.

Contemporary usage

Pikey remained, as of 1989, common prison slang for Romani people or those who have a similar lifestyle of itinerant unemployment and travel. More recently, pikey was applied to Irish Travellers (other slurs include tinkers) and non-Romanichal travellers. In the late 20th century, it came to be used to describe "a lower-class person, regarded as coarse or disreputable".

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 chavs), or merely a person of any social class who "lives on the cheap" such as a bohemian. It is also used as an adjective, e.g. "a pikey estate" or "a pikey pub". Following complaints from Travellers' groups about racism, when the term was used by presenter Jeremy Clarkson as a pun for Pike's Peak in the television programme Top Gear, the Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust ruled that, in this instance, the term merely meant "cheap". In doing so, it justified the ascribed meaning by quoting the Wikipedia article for the term.

In 2003 the Firle Bonfire Society burned an effigy of a family of gypsies inside a caravan after travellers 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".

In 2014, Plymouth band Mad Dog McRea released a song "Pikey killed my goldfish" on their Alive EP.

The Oxford History of English refers to:

See also

  • Chav
  • Eshay
  • Didicoy
  • New Age travellers
  • Trailer trash

References

Sources

  • Anger over "pikey" slur (BBC News)
  • Davidson exits after TV gay row (BBC News)&nbsp;— use of "pikey" by Marco Pierre White
  • How offensive is the word "pikey"? (BBC News)
  • Brundle escapes punishment for "pikey" comment (Planet F1)