kike
Kike (noun) means a highly offensive ethnic slur used against Jewish people. Example: “The word is a slur and should not be used; it is included here only as a matter of lexicographic record.”
How to use kike
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishA deeply offensive slur targeting Jewish people. It carries no neutral use.
This is a slur, not a neutral descriptive term. It appears in dictionaries purely for reference and historical/linguistic documentation, never as a suggested or acceptable usage.
Word forms
- Plural
- kikes
- Third person singular
- kikes
- Past tense
- kiked
- Comparative
- more kike
- Superlative
- most kike
Etymology
Origins are disputed. One theory traces it to Yiddish קײַקל (kaykl, "circle"): early 20th-century Jewish immigrants to the US who could not write in Latin script reportedly signed documents with a circle rather than an X, to avoid anything resembling a cross. Other theories point to a contraction of the phrase "Ikey-Kikey" or to Scots keek ("to peek"), tied to clothing-industry espionage. No theory is universally accepted.
