Pikey

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Pikey is a pejorative slang term used mainly in England^[1][2] to refer to Irish Travellers, gypsies or people of low social class.

16th Century

The term pikey as a pejorative 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:

Boorde remarked in 1547 of the: "Egipcions [sic: Egyptians i.e.: Gypsies] be swarte [swarthy] and doth go disgsy'd [disguised] in theyr [their] apparel, contrary to other nacyons [nations]: they be lyght [light] fyngered [fingered], and use pyking^[3]"

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) ^[4]

Nineteenth-century usage

Dickens in 1837 writes disparagingly of itinerant pike-keepers^[4]

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".^[5] In 1847, J. O. Halliwell in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words recorded the use of "pikey" to mean a gipsy.^[5] 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".^[5]

Thomas Acton's Gypsy Politics and Social Change notes John Camden Hotten'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.^[6]

The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society similarly agrees the term pikey solely applied (negatively) to Gypsies^[7][8]

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..."^[9]

Pikey remains common prison slang for Romani people or those who have a (perceived) similar lifestyle of itinerant unemployment and travel.^[10]

More recently pikey was applied to Irish Travellers (also known as tinkers and knackers) and non-Roma Gypsies.^[11][12] In the late 20th century, it came to be used to describe "a lower-class person, regarded as coarse or disreputable."^[5][13]

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.

Pikey is also commonly used to describe someone living in a caravan (not necessarily a Romani) and a "half pikey" is someone who lives in a caravan but owns the land it occupies.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[14]

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, or merely a person of any social class who "lives on the cheap". This seems to be the meaning intended by Stephen Fry in an episode of QI, grouping together "hoodies, pikeys and chavs", and intimating that these people are of a sort who "go out on the town, beating people up and drinking Bacardi Breezers".

Negative English attitudes towards "pikeys" were a running theme in the 2000 Guy Ritchie film Snatch. In 2003 one of the Lewes Bonfire Societies burned a family of Travellers in effigy inside a caravan. The number plate on the caravan read P1KEY. A storm of protests and accusations of racism rapidly followed.^[15][16] 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'.^[17]

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 [sic: of England] 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].^[18]

The American terms "trailer trash" and "white trash" are similar in the condescension and disdain with which they are used, though the stereotypes differ in some particulars.

Recent examples of the word's use on British television include Shameless (opening quote from the show "Come and see Pikeys makin' a mess of their lives"), The Catherine Tate Show and a BBC documentary, The Class System and Me about the politician John Prescott. Also seen on Top Gear with an image of a pie and a key on the hood of a car. Recent occurrences of the word include its use in Guy Ritchie's Snatch, in which Brad Pitt plays one such character, and the 2007 film St. Trinian's, where one character describes the anarchic girls' school as 'like Hogwarts for pikeys'.

See also

• Didicoy
• Irish Traveller
• New Age travellers
• Romani people

References

1. ^  John Ayto (Editor) (1999). The Oxford Dictionary of Slang. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-863157-X. 
2. ^  T. F. Hoad (Editor) (1986). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283098-8. 
3. ^  Tony Thorne (1990). Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ISBN 0-7475-4594-4. 

External links

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

Notes