bohunk

[prettygoodword]

bohunk (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.

Comments

[ranunculus]

Interesting. In my high school in the 70's that word was applied to a statuesque young man with a very attractive physique.

[prettygoodword]

I can see how that semantic drift could have happened, given the laborer connotation.

[full_metal_ox]

As well as the possible free-associational wordplay of beau+hunk.

[lilysea]

I wonder if this is where the 1970s/1980s "hunk" for a man considered muscular and sexually attractive, traces its roots back from.

[prettygoodword]

Nope -- that's actually older and comes from hunk as in chunk (ultimately from a Dutch word). Though as noted in comments, there was probably some cross-fertilization going on as well.

(Hunky-dory as in everything's good has yet another source -- New York City street slang from the 1850s for a home base in games, which TIL.)