Moke
noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A donkey. colloquial, dialectal
"[…] We do but as the world does; and a girl in our society accepts the best party which offers itself, just as Miss Chummey, when entreated by two young gentlemen of the order of costermongers, inclines to the one who rides from market on a moke, rather than to the gentleman who sells his greens from a handbasket."
- 2 British informal for donkey wordnet
- 3 The mesh of a net, or of anything resembling a net. obsolete
"Any trawl-net, whereof the moak holdeth not five inches size throughout."
- 4 A black person. US, archaic, derogatory, ethnic, slang, slur
"I don't like the Minstrel folks, and I doesn't care for the endmen's jokes; I has no use for the musical mokes, and I don't like a circus clown […]"
- 5 A performer, such as a minstrel, who plays on several musical instruments. dated
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- 6 A stupid person; a dolt.
"Whoever infers that money is not happiness, is either a truist or a moke."
- 7 British small utility vehicle (styled "MOKE").
- 8 A mixture of cannabis and tobacco, especially smoked from a bong or water pipe. US, slang
Example
More examples"[…] We do but as the world does; and a girl in our society accepts the best party which offers itself, just as Miss Chummey, when entreated by two young gentlemen of the order of costermongers, inclines to the one who rides from market on a moke, rather than to the gentleman who sells his greens from a handbasket."
Etymology
Unknown. In the sense of a variety performer, comes from "The Lively Moke" (or "Musical Moke"), an 1860s blackface song, dance and multi-instrumental routine popularized by Johnny Thompson, William J. "Billy" Ashcroft and others.
Related phrases
More for "moke"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.