honky

Meaning

Noun

• A white (Caucasian) person.
• A factory hand or general unskilled worker.

Origin

• Sense of “factory hand” attested from 1946. Compare hunky, bohunk.
• Term of racial abuse attested 1967, most likely from hunky, an African-American vernacular shortening of Hungarian. Another possible etymon is Wolof xonq, a term frequently used in African languages to describe white men.