Kike, also known as the K-word, is an ethnic slur directed at Jewish people.
The earliest recorded use of the word dates to the 1880s.[1]
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 immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century.[2] 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 [Jewish] 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."
The Encyclopedia of Swearing suggests that Leo Rosten's suggestion is the most likely. He stated that:
The Yiddish word Yiddish: קײַקל (kikel) probably descends from the ancient Greek word for circle, (kyklos). Ironically, this Greek word also gave rise to the name of the Ku Klux Klan, an American anti-Jewish hate group. [3]
Compounding the mysterious origin of this term, in 1864 in the United Kingdom the word ike or ikey was used as a derogatory term for Jews, which derived from the name "Isaac", a common Jewish name.[4] [5]
Some sources say that the first use was on Ellis Island as a term for Jewish people,[6] others that it was used primarily by Jewish-Americans to put down Jewish immigrants.[4]
In a travel report from 1937 for the German-Jewish publication German: [[Der Morgen (journal)|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 (Eastern) Jews: