Kike


The word kike is an ethnic slur for a Jew.

Etymology

The earliest recorded use of the word dates to the 1880s.
The source of the term is uncertain, but the Encyclopedia of Swearing stated the most reasonable and most likely origin of the term is the one proposed by Leo Rosten, according to whom:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it may be an alteration of the endings –ki or –ky common in the personal names of Jews in eastern Europe who emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century. A variation or expansion of this theory published in Our Crowd, by Stephen Birmingham, postulates that the term "kike" was coined as a put-down by the assimilated U.S. Jews from Germany to identify eastern European and Russian Jews: "Because many Russian names ended in 'ki', they were called 'kikes'—a German Jewish contribution to the American vernacular. The name then proceeded to be co-opted by non-Jews as it gained prominence in its usage in society, and was later used as a general derogatory slur."
Compounding the mysterious origin of this term, in 1864 in the UK the word ike or ikey was used as a derogatory term for Jews, which derived from the name "Isaac", a common Jewish name.

Usage

Some sources say that the first use was on Ellis Island as a term for Jewish people, others that it was used primarily by Jewish-Americans to put down Jewish immigrants.
In a travel report from 1937 for the German-Jewish publication Der Morgen, Joachim Prinz, writing of the situation of Jewish immigrants in the US, mentions the word as being used by Jews to refer contemptuously to other Jews: