Word.ws English Dictionary

honky

honky noun: a white (Caucasian) person.

Noun

honky (plural honkies)

  1. (Canada, US, derogatory, ethnic, slur) A white (Caucasian) person.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:honky.
  2. (US, obsolete) A factory hand or general unskilled worker.

Synonyms of honky

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of honky

Forms of honky

pluralhonkies
alternative formhonkey
alternative formhonkie

Origin of honky

Sense of “factory hand” attested from 1946. Compare hunky, bohunk. Most likely from hunky (“Hungarian, Slav, eastern European; any white person”), an African-American vernacular shortening of Hungarian. Another possible etymon is Wolof xonq (“red, pink”), a term frequently used in African languages to describe white men. As a term of racial abuse it was popularized by the Black Panther Party starting from 1967, who sought a rebuttal to nigger.

Words formed from honky

Phrases with honky

Words that rhyme with honky

Questions about honky

What does honky mean?
Honky means a white (Caucasian) person.
What part of speech is honky?
Honky is a noun.
What is the plural of honky?
The plural of honky is honkies.

Words near honky in the dictionary

  1. honklets
  2. Honkong
  3. honks
  4. honks it on
  5. honks off
  6. honky
  7. honky tonk
  8. honky tonk-like
  9. honky tonker
  10. honky tonkers
  11. honky tonks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: honky (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-honky.wav.

Cite this entry: “honky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/honky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.