Oik: Annals of British Slang

Because I am interested in words and possess a modest vocabulary in English and several other languages, I am sometimes accosted on the street or at the better sort of funeral-home openings by smelly little oiks who stand one inch from my head and spew into my face the question, “Yeah? So how many effin’ languages d’youse speak anyways?”

The question is always asked with bristling malice.

If I say I know Russian, the questioning oik asks me to state the somewhat rare Russian monosyllable that means ‘one who sucks permafrost while whistling “Dark Eyes.” ’ When I cannot immediately shout out the correct Russian word, the greasy oik slobbers, “See! Didn’t think yuh could speak Russky, you phony arsehole.” Hmmm. As the questioner turns to go away, I look into the oik’s blank face and conceive the charitable estimate that he has the IQ of a shucked mollusk.

I retail this anecdote merely to introduce you, if needs must be, to one of my choicest terms of contempt: oik. It is not well-known in North America but enjoyed quite a long run as street talk in England. Although nowadays replaced by terms like chav and white trash and scum, oik or oick deserves revival. I define the word chav at the end of this essay.

In this month of world soccer championship play, a synonym for soccer hooligan may be useful. Oik is one.

Coined in British public schoolboy slang, oik first appears in print early in the 1920s, as a short form of oickman. The word is sticky with classist opprobrium. To the public school boys who appear to have originated the word, it began as a snotty putdown of boys from other schools, then boys of working-class origin, then trades people of the town where the public school was located, then any uneducated, boorish poor person.

The Origin of Oik

No one knows the source of the word. To me it seems the repetition of a dialect syllable /oi/ that replaced more refined English syllables like /ī/, for example, the Standard English ‘I was going’ becomes in Cockney ‘Oi wes gown.’ One source says it was upperclass rich boys mocking the regional English accent of “Geordies” (Brits from Tyneside and the northeast in general) who pronounce the preposition like as ‘loik’ and the American running shoe Nike as ‘Noikee.’

Yobo Synonym?

Yes, oik reeks of snobbism, but the vulgar herd who hurl ignorant questions at innocent word-nuts, they reek too, in a more olfactory mode. Some careless dictionaries of slang claim that oik has been replaced by other terms like yobo, but this is false. Yobo, as in soccer yobo, always indicates violence mixed with its accompanying low-class stupidity: “Oi, Constable, Oi di’unt mine to blind that Marmite-faced bint when Oi stabbed her twen’ee throie times wif a knittin’ naidle. Buuuuuut, she were cheerin’ for uuuther team. Wif nout for our lads.”

Chav

A chav is a lout, a criminal rowdy, a young ruffian with front teeth missing, a forehead pocked with goalpost dents, no job and a police record longer than his dick. Chavs piss in the street, defecate in Grandma’s geraniums, snort coke, and spend their useless lives on welfare or accumulating scabs. The word may derive from British Romany, the language of English Gypsies, where chavo is one of the guys, a young male.

Citations & Street Use:

1.

When a politician who did not attend a British public school dared to run for the highest office in the land, this comment appeared in British print, “I don't want some oik from a comprehensive in Number Ten!”

A comprehensive in Britain is a public high school, state-run, that does not admit students only on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, but on their need for further education. Number Ten is #10 Downing Street, London, official residence of the Prime Minister.

2.

“Our Mavis has to live in disgusting juxtaposition with oiks, with women — Lady Gaga wannabes — with lemming tattoos on their tits, with men, yobo layabouts with so many steel rings put through their scrotums they could play their balls with felted mallets and form a vibraphone band.”

3.

“Bloody 'ell Dave, obviously the spotty little oik has mused at Mick's stage whilst eatin' his spam and pickle sandwich on his lunch break.”

4.

“Bloody slimy oik walking like a retard, some chav with joined eyebrows.”

Now therefore enjoy your newest term of abuse, the word oik, another cartridge in the machine-gun of insults needed to fight your way through this idiot-infested world.