(while we're on the subject of words people dont understant)... to find the use of the word...

[swottybetty]

piky completely unacceptable?? the world and her aunt kick of at the mention of so many other ethnically derogatory terms,and yet piky is acceptable. how is that???

don't think I ever came across that term....tbh....

anytime anyone squawks pikey/chavvy they get short shrift on MN

The Oxford English Dictionary traced the earliest use of "pikey" to The Times in August 1838, which referred to strangers who had come to the Isle of Sheppey as "pikey-men".[1] In 1847, J. O. Halliwell in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words recorded the use of "pikey" to mean a gipsy.[1] In 1887, W. D. Parish and W. F. Shaw in the Dictionary of Kentish Dialect recorded the use of the word to mean "a turnpike traveller; a vagabond; and so generally a low fellow".[1]

Contemporary usage
More recently it was applied to Irish Travellers and non-Roma Gypsies.[2][3] In the late 20th century, it came to be used to describe "a lower-class person, regarded as coarse or disreputable."[1][4]

Pikey's most common contemporary use is not as a term for the Gypsy ethnic group, but as a catch-all phrase to refer to people, of any ethnic group, who travel around with no fixed abode.

Well from that description I am not a pikey or half pikey as my Gt Grandparents were Romanian Gypsies...

My next door neighbours are Irish and their son uses the word 'pikey' like it means scum. Unsure whether his parents think it's acceptable.

A traveller of my acquaintance finds it deeply offensive.

To her, Ps are "people who live by the side of the road."

She is part of a long-standing traveller community who own a series of businesses which involve a necessary itinerant lifestyle, and who also have a bought-and-paid-for base.

Incidentally, she uses the word Chavvy though. To describe an unlikeable non-traveller male. NOT female.

I have come to the conclusion that calling a traveller, from an established Traveller Family, a pikey, is tantamount to racial abuse. As that's how it seems to them.

Daisy, I'm Irish and I don't use the word Pikey. I never hear it either.

IN FACT, the word Pikey had to be explained to me when I went to UK in 1995, so it's not a word in common parlance here in Ireland. It's very much an English word.

if you're neighbour uses it, he has 'gone native'.

Yes gypsy has been romanticised. I mean, there were gypsy style skirts in M&s ! Probably still are, yak!

Have to admit to cringing whenever we have travellers parked in our store carpark, and the managers telling us to be on our guard for "pikeys"

It really isnt a nice word at all

i work in a HA who have to be quite up to date on issues of equality and i was dismayed to be pulled for using the term 'gypsy' some travellers/people of romany origin, find that term offensive becuase its derived from false history.

so on the pc front - gypsy is not the term to be used apparently.

i dont think pikey has ever been acceptable on mumsnet

but then it was only a couple of years ago that we had virtual riots over the word chav. Now its in the dictionary and is part of every day speak for everyone i meet.

Pikey is an old word. When I was younger we used it as an insult (about 15 years ago) but I haven't heard it used for ages now.

Are YOU a pikey

I got 10 - entering the danger zone apparently

in fairness over here in ireland pikey only came into real prominence and normal usage after snatch, the guy ritchie movie. i don't i'd heard it used over here before and assumed it to be an english word.
up till then i'd only ever really heard people use knacer/traveller/itinerant

*i don't think...
**knacker

sorry typing allover the place today

Lol I got 15 and I 'have the whiff of dogblanket'. That's so funny because I was just sitting on the sofa and got a bit chilly and put the dog's blanket over my feet!

OMG wotulookinat, next you'll be taking him for a walk on a piece of string!

We do have a lead, although it is looking a little ropey!!!!!!!!

Well be careful it doesn't snap when you tie him up outside Iceland.

Hee.

Hee hee I'm just tucking the bottom of my trouser legs into my socks so I look the part.

Gypsies and pikeys are not the same. My grandad lived with Romany Gypsies for a while and they are not the same in any way.

What's a diddicoy then? My dad (Prince Phillip that he is) brings them up sometimes...

Diddycoy is the same as pikey, gyppo, traveler, hedge moper, tinker, chav is just a name for a another lad,same as bruv,mort is another name for a girl, theres so many it is unbelievable