Goy
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 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
- 1 A surname.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"The word "gentile" is derived from a Latin translation of the Hebrew word "goy.""
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.
Related phrases
More for "goy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.