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prettygoodwordbohunk (BOH-huhngk) - (N.Am.) (ethnic slur) n., a person from east-central Europe, especially a laborer.
Like most ethnic slurs, this is disparaging and offensive. That said, I don't know how common it is today, given I only recently learned of it, in a story written in the 1920s. Dates to around 1900, formed by combining Bo(hemian)* + Hung(arian), so originally specifically central Europe, but it soon was applied to Slavic immigrants from lands east of there. (The ethnic slur hunky, used of Slavic coal miners in the Appalachian region, is related only in the sense that it's also clipped from Hungarian.)
* The western half of what's now Czechia.
---L.
Like most ethnic slurs, this is disparaging and offensive. That said, I don't know how common it is today, given I only recently learned of it, in a story written in the 1920s. Dates to around 1900, formed by combining Bo(hemian)* + Hung(arian), so originally specifically central Europe, but it soon was applied to Slavic immigrants from lands east of there. (The ethnic slur hunky, used of Slavic coal miners in the Appalachian region, is related only in the sense that it's also clipped from Hungarian.)
* The western half of what's now Czechia.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-10 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-10 04:26 pm (UTC)I can see how that semantic drift could have happened, given the laborer connotation.