homie

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhəʊ.mi/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈhoʊ.mi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊmi
• Hyphenation: hom‧ie

Etymology 1

Earliest known reference is in the 1946 tune "The House of Blue Lights" by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack, when Morse improvises a spoken-word intro. Equivalent to home +‎ -ie.

Alternative forms

• homey, homee

Noun

homie (plural homies)

2. (African-American Vernacular) Someone, particularly a friend or male acquaintance, from one's hometown.
4. (African-American Vernacular) A close friend or fellow member of a youth gang.

   Synonyms: homeboy, homeskillet, nigga; see also Thesaurus:friend

   Hey there, Francis, my homie!

6. (African-American Vernacular) An inner-city youth.

Derived terms

• homiecide

Translations

a friend; somebody one often hangs out with

• Dutch: maat (nl) m
• Finnish: kamu (fi) (slang)
• French: pote (fr) m or f, gros (fr) m (slang)
• Galician: colega m, compañeiro (gl) m
• German: Kumpel (de) m
• Hebrew: סַחְְבָּק (he) m (sáẖbaq) (slang)
• Hungarian: pajtás (hu), haver (hu), cimbora (hu), barát (hu)
• Icelandic: félagi (is) m
• Jamaican Creole: chargie
• Macedonian: ба́тка m (bátka)
• Portuguese: mano (pt) m
• Russian: кореш (ru) (koreš)
• Spanish: (Mexico) cuate (es) m, socio (es) m, (Latin America) compadre (es) m, (Latin America) compinche (es), (slang, regional, Sinaloa) camarada (es) m, (Cuba) consorte (es)
• Swedish: kompis (sv) c, polare (sv) c

Etymology 2

Noun

homie (plural homies)

1. (Polari) Alternative spelling of omi (“man”)

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:man

   • 1977, Rictor Norton, quoting Peter Burton, The Gentle Art of Confounding Naffs, quoted in Myth of the Modern Homosexual, Bloomsbury Publishing, published 2016, →ISBN, page 115:

     As feely homies, when we launched ourselves onto the gay scene, polari was all the rage. We would zhoosh our riahs, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar.