Talk:hunky

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Latest comment: 3 years ago by -sche in topic RFM discussion: February 2021
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RFM discussion: February 2021[edit]

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.


The ethnic slur. The entries seem to be saying the same thing but they differ on the number of sense lines, the racism qualifier, etc. Equinox 22:22, 6 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Aside from the duplication, should the dated label be applied? The one quotation is about the early 20th century. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:27, 6 February 2021 (UTC)Reply
I merged the entries on hunky; checking Ngrams for the plurals (to avoid hits for the unrelated adjective), it seems hunkies is nearly 50 times more common, although it's impossible to be sure how much of that is hunky and how much is hunkie.
The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang, with four citations, says this is also a derogatory term for any white person, like honky. However, google books:"hunkies" "niggers" demonstrates that in the same kind of citations as Routledge offers (which do suggest it sometimes means any white person), it often still has its a specific meaning; this leads me to suppose it's one imprecise term that can be applied with varying degrees of concern for precision, rather than two senses. But what do you think, would it be better to split "synonym of honky: any white person" off as a separate sense?
I put "now uncommon", which seems to be true; change to "dated" or something else if you like. I left "ethnic slur" although I considered whether to change it to "derogatory". - -sche (discuss) 06:30, 12 February 2021 (UTC)Reply