homie

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈhəʊmi/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈhoʊmi/
• Rhymes: -əʊmi

Etymology 1

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

Alternative forms

• homey, homee

Noun

homie (plural homies)

1. (slang) Someone, particularly a friend or male acquaintance, from one's hometown.
2. (slang) A close friend or fellow member of a youth gang.

   Hey there, Francis, my homie!

   Yo, homie!

3. (African-American Vernacular) An inner-city youth.
4. (African-American Vernacular) A boyfriend or partner of a closeted man, used along with "Lil," to mean a bottom and "Big," to mean a top.

Synonyms

• (friend): homeboy, homeskillet, nigga (African American Vernacular English)
• (friend): See Thesaurus:friend

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

Variant spelling of Polari (early-to-mid 20th-century British English cant/slang popular among gay men) omi (“man, bloke”).

Noun

homie (plural homies)

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

Synonyms

• (man): See Thesaurus:man