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Goy
Definitions
- 1 A surname.
- 1 A non-Jew, a gentile. offensive, sometimes
"I don’t think that marriage is working, but I’m not going to be stupid about it and say she shouldn’t have married a goy."
- 2 Alternative letter-case form of goy. alt-of
- 3 a Christian as contrasted with a Jew wordnet
- 4 Synonym of shabbos goy (“a gentile thought to be subservient to Jewish people”) derogatory
Etymology
Borrowed from Yiddish גוי (goy, “gentile”), from Hebrew גּוֹי (goy, “nation”). Compare Exodus he:T:6: מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגֹוי קָדֹושׁ (mamleḵeṯ kohănīm wəḡōy qāḏōš, “ […] a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”) (referring to the Jewish people). The word goy does not technically refer to non-Jews, but rather to a nation per se; the Jews are said to constitute a goy. But through common usage – namely referring to "the [other non-Jewish] nations" – the word came to colloquially refer to non-Jews.
Various origins: * English habitational surname of Norman origin, from any of various places in France called Gouy. * Borrowed from Galician Goy, a habitational surname from a small village in the province of Lugo. * Borrowed from French Goy, a metonymic occupational surname for a farmer, from Old French goi (“bill hook, kind of knife”). * Borrowed from Hokkien 倪 (gê); compare Ni, which derives from the standard Chinese pronunciation of these characters.
See also for "goy"
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