goy or goi [goi] EXAMPLES|WORD ORIGIN noun, plural goy·im [goi-im] /ˈgɔɪ ɪm/, goys. Usually Disparaging. a term used by a Jew to refer to someone who is not Jewish. a term used by an observant Jew to refer to a Jew who is not religious or is ignorant of Judaism. Liberaldictionary.com
Origin of goy 1835–45; Yiddish Hebrew goi nation, non-Jew, Jew ignorant of the Jewish religionRelated formsgoy·ish, adjectiveUsage note Use of this term usually implies a contempt for non-Jews as being different from or even inferior to Jews: Only a goy would use such faulty logic. goy is rarely used in a neutral, descriptive way as a synonym for gentile , though that is its meaning in Yiddish and Hebrew. In another usually disparaging usage, goy is applied to a Jew who is not observant. Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019 Examples from the Web for goy Contemporary Examples of goy
You put the id back in Yid, Portnoy instructed, and you come to understand the “oy” in goy.
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The narrator calls two of the men “Bill the Goy” and “Clyde the Schlub.”
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Historical Examples of goy
Two in particular, Agasaki and Goy, are thus described by Kmpfer.
William W. Sanger
In the eyes of the Goy he’s something peculiar, something disgraceful!
Simon Eichelkatz; The Patriarch
Ulrich Frank
The indefatigable litigant, the brilliant engineer, to whom ideas, goy!
George Alfred Townsend
Because the man who did it, is a wicked brute who by accident is a Jew, and might just as well have been a Goy.
Simon Eichelkatz; The Patriarch
Ulrich Frank
British Dictionary definitions for goy goy noun plural goyim (ˈɡɔɪɪm) or goys a Jewish word for a gentile Derived Formsgoyish, adjectiveWord Origin for goy from Yiddish, from Hebrew goi people Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Word Origin and History for goy n.
“gentile, non-Jew” (plural goyim), 1835, from Hebrew goy “people, nation;” in Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew, also “gentile.”
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper