Ofay

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page has been transwikied to Wiktionary.

Because this article has content useful to Wikipedia's sister project Wiktionary, it has been copied to there, and its dictionary counterpart can be found at either Wiktionary:Transwiki:Ofay or Wiktionary:Ofay. It should no longer appear in Category:Copy to Wiktionary and should not be re-added there.
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and if this article cannot be expanded beyond a dictionary definition, it should be tagged for deletion. If it can be expanded into an article, please do so and remove this template.

Note that {{vocab-stub}} is deprecated. If {{vocab-stub}} was removed when this article was transwikied, and the article is deemed encyclopedic, there should be a more suitable category for it.

Ofay is a racial slur, a slang term for a white person. The term first appeared in print in the early 20th century, and may be older still.^[1] The word is probably now best known from Lorraine Hansberry's play "A Raisin in the Sun," where the character Beneatha declares "everything is strictly peachy keen, as the ofay kids say."

[edit] Origins

The word's origin is unclear. Two possible derivations point to the Atlantic slave trade and Nigeria. Among the possibilities are:

During the 17th through 19th centuries, European traders established coastal ports in present-day Nigeria for their increasing traffic in slaves destined for the Americas. Thus, "Ofay" might derive from the Ibibio word "afia," which means "light-colored," and may have referred to European traders.
"Ofay" might also come from the Yoruba word "ofe," spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger such as that posed by European traders.
Another possible source of the word is the French "au fait" (lit. "to the fact"), a phrase sometimes used in English, and sometimes facetiously used to describe a pompous person.