honky

Meaning

1. (Canada, US, derogatory, ethnic, slur) A white (Caucasian) person.
2. (US, obsolete) A factory hand or general unskilled worker.

Synonyms

honkie

honkey

whitey

Caucasian

white

White

Etymology

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.