Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *ḱweyt-
Proto-Germanic *hwītaz
Proto-West Germanic *hwīt
Old English hwīt
Middle English whit
English white
English -y
English whitey
From white (“bright and colorless; a white-skinned person”) + -y (“forming diminutives”).
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *ḱweyt-
Proto-Germanic *hwītaz
Proto-West Germanic *hwīt
Old English hwīt
Middle English whit
English white
English -y
English whitey
From white (“bright and colorless; a white-skinned person”) + -y (“forming diminutives”).
Meanings
(derogatory, ethnic, offensive, qualifier:especially African-American Vernacular, slur) A white person, a person of Western European descent.
"Whites don't like us because they think we're niggies. And blacks don't like us because they think we're whiteys. We don't fit anywhere. That's why we've gone off alone, created a totally separate thing." 1976, New York Magazine, volume 9, number 47, page 102:
She's a whitey in jeans / She's an outlaw 1970, “Outlaw”, in Outlaw, performed by Eugene McDaniels:
Touché, honky. So, whitey, what did you do today? Oppress a new land and make the people there Christians against their will? 1997, Dave Chappelle, “Racism Connoisseur”, in HBO Comedy Half-Hour (television production):
I can't pay no doctor bills / But whitey’s on the moon / Ten years from now I'll be payin' still / While whitey’s on the moon 1970, “Whitey on the Moon”, in Gil Scott-Heron (lyrics), Small Talk at 125th and Lenox:
(UK, slang) A state or bout of sickness, especially induced by cannabis use.
'Dead bodies. Up in trees,' I said.
I handed him the crisps.
'I'm gonnae have a whitey,' he said and fucked off up to the toilet to be sick. 2012, Jenny Fagan, The Panopticon, page 233:
Ocasionaly^([sic]) things don't work quite as expected but seriously i can't remeber^([sic]) last time i had a "whitey" not for many years that a certainty. 2007 April 29, Mark Whiteley, uk.politics.drugs (Usenet):
'Youths' happily do both and they're almost seen as weird if they don't smoke themselves into a whitey with their mates. 2007 February 13, Baroness Edwina Frogbucket, “Cameron calls for harder line on cannabis use”, in uk.legal (Usenet):
Tristan: I'm having a whitey.
He seems about to be sick.
Connie: You're on a placebo, Tristan, you're not on the drug. 2013, Lucy Prebble, The Effect, page 75:
(Drug users consuming this much alcohol are either slumpped in the corner having a whitey or already on their way to casualty in an ambulance.) 2002 April 11, mi...@emgee.demon.co.uk, uk.politics.drugs (Usenet):