Pikey (/ˈpaɪkiː/; also spelledpikie,pykie)[1][2] is an ethnic slur referring toGypsy, Roma and Traveller people. It is used mainly in the United Kingdom and in Ireland to refer to people who belong togroups which had a traditional travelling lifestyle.[3][4] Groups referred to with this term includeIrish Travellers,English Gypsies,Welsh Kale,Scottish Lowland Travellers,Scottish Highland Travellers, andFunfair Travellers. These groups consider the term to be extremely offensive.[5][6]
It is used by extension as aclassist insult against marginalisedworking class communities, similar to the termchav.[7]
The term "pikey" is possibly derived from "pike" which, c. 1520, meant "highway" and is related to the wordsturnpike (toll road) andpikeman (toll collector).[8] InRobert 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":
And in the samin thay went, but mair abaid,
Withoutin fyre or candill birnand bricht
For commonly sic pykeris luffis not lycht.[9]
And together they went, but more about,
without fire or candle burning bright
For commonly, such thieves do not like light.
Charles Dickens in 1837 writes disparagingly of itinerantpike-keepers.[8]
TheOxford English Dictionary traced the earliest use of "pikey" toThe Times in August 1838, which referred to strangers who had come to theIsle of Sheppey as "pikey-men".[10][full citation needed] In 1847, J. O. Halliwell in hisDictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words recorded the use of "pikey" to mean agypsy.[10] In 1887, W. D. Parish and W. F. Shaw in theDictionary of Kentish Dialect recorded the use of the word to mean "a turnpike traveller; a vagabond; and so generally a low fellow".[10][full citation needed]
Thomas Acton'sGypsy Politics and Social Change notesJohn Camden Hotten'sSlang Dictionary (1887) as similarly stating:
Hotten's dictionary of slang givespike at asgo away andPikey asa tramp or a Gypsy. He continues apikey-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 thepike or turnpike road.[11]
TheJournal of the Gypsy Lore Society similarly agrees the termpikey solely applied (negatively) to Romani people.[12][13]
Pikey remained, as of 1989, common prison slang forRomani people or those who have a similar lifestyle of itinerant unemployment and travel.[14] More recently,pikey was applied to Irish Travellers (other slurs includetinkers andknackers) and non-Romanichaltravellers.[5][15] In the late 20th century, it came to be used to describe "a lower-class person, regarded as coarse or disreputable".[10][5]
The most common contemporary use ofpikey is not as a term for the Romani ethnic group, but as a catch-all phrase to refer to people, of any ethnic group, who travel around withno fixed abode. Among English Romani Gypsies the term pikey refers to a Traveller who is not of Romani descent. It may also refer to a member who has been cast out of the family.[16]
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 aschavs), or merely a person of any social class who "lives on the cheap" such as abohemian. 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 presenterJeremy Clarkson as a pun forPike's Peak in the television programmeTop Gear, the Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust ruled that, in this instance, the term merely meant "cheap".[17] In doing so, it justified the ascribed meaning by quoting the Wikipedia article for the term.[18]
In 2003 theFirle Bonfire Society burned an effigy of a family of gypsies inside a caravan after travellers damaged local land.[19] The number plate on the caravan read "P1KEY". A storm of protests and accusations of racism rapidly followed.[20][21][22] Twelve members of the society were arrested but theCrown Prosecution Service decided that there was insufficient evidence to proceed on a charge of "incitement to racial hatred".[23]
The Oxford History of English refers to:
young people who usecharver orpikey to identify a contemporary style of dress or general demeanour suggest an aimless "street" lifestyle, unaware of the Romani origin of the first or of connotation with "gypsy" of the second.
Pikey, formed from turnpike roads, as along withpikee andpiker been used in the South East [of England] especially since the mid-19th-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 bychav.
A very recent survey has unearthed 127 synonyms, withned favoured in Scotland,charver in North East England andpikey across the South [of England].[24]
pikie.
pykie.
It was because there's always someone out there, I feared, who was going to tap me on the shoulder and say "you dear, who do you think you are and where do you get off at, you're a gyspy, you're a pikey
Then, a year or so ago, I noticed the words "pikey" and "chav" were being used as synonyms for "common
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