Talk:Kike

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Judaism Low‑importance

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OED[edit]

I'm not educated enough on the topic to edit the article, but the "circle" etymology sounded more like a legend to me. I looked it up in the OED and the full etymology is below:

Origin: Of unknown origin. Etymology: Origin unknown. For an overview of several early etymological suggestions, see H. L. Mencken Amer. Lang. Supplement 1 (1945) 613–6. A suggested derivation from -ki , -ky , in the surname suffix -ski , -sky (of Slavonic origin), is highly unlikely on both onomastic and formal grounds.

L. Rosten ( Joys of Yiddish (1968) 180, at cited word) suggests that the term arose as a back-formation < Yiddish kaykl , keykl ‘circle’ (ultimately < ancient Greek κύκλος : see cycle n.1); Jewish immigrants to the U.S. would supposedly have been so called because, if illiterate, they drew a circle as a signature instead of an X (which was too close to the Christian sign of the cross for them to use in good conscience). However, the usual Yiddish word for ‘circle’ is not kaykl , keykl , but krays ( < German Kreis : see Wiener Kreis n.).

Perhaps compare also earlier ikey n. and its etymons Ike, Ikey, pet forms of Isaac, a common Jewish male forename.

The mention of krays as the more common word makes me wonder if the article is just repeating a legend.

2601:281:D47F:2918:C54A:BF7C:AFC8:C947 (talk) 19:57, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If the word originated in the 1880s it can't be from Ellis Island.[edit]

The immigration station there was begun in 1892. So it would've had to begun at Castle Garden for the "kikel" hypothesis to be true. That's at Battery Park in lower Manhattan. [[User:Rickyrab2|Rickyrab (2nd account)!]] | [[Talk:Rickyrab2| yada yada yada]] (old page: [[User:Rickyrab]]) (talk) 05:03, 5 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Earliest recorded usage[edit]

The current article reports a date from the 1880s, citing (in part) the OED. The current OED entry does not show any usage prior to 1901. Does anyone have access to either of the other two cited sources to confirm if they do support that earlier date? --Dante Alighieri | Talk 08:08, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This talk page's archives got a bit tangled up[edit]

This talk page currently has both an /Archive 1 (which is the only archive linked in the talk page header above) and an Archive 30 (which is the archive that the bot has actually been archiving to).

It looks like when the bot was originally added the archive counter was erroneously set to 30, and then that archive was moved to be "Archive 1" without changing the bot parameters, so the bot blithely kept adding archived messages below the redirect message. I've updated the counter in the bot configuration instructions above, and ~~intend to~~ have manually moved the archived conversations that are currently in "Archive 30" into the extant "Archive 1". Princess Lirin (talk) 10:21, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]