bloke

• bloak (archaic)

Unknown [from 1847]. Hypotheses include:[1]

• from Celtic ploc (“large, stubborn person”);
• from Hindi or Romani loke (“man”).

• (UK) enPR: blōk, IPA^(key): /bləʊk/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊk

bloke (plural blokes)

1. (Britain, informal) A man, a fellow; an ordinary man, a man on the street. [From 1847.]
   • 1847, George W. M. Reynolds, The Mysteries of London (volume 3), G. Vickers, London, page 66:

     He buzzed a bloak and a shakester of a yack and a skin.

   • 1930, P. G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves, 2006, Overlook Press, page 235,

     The door flew open, and there was a bloke with spectacles on his face and all round the spectacles an expression of strained anguish. A bloke with a secret sorrow.

   • 1931, Cab Calloway, Irving Mills, Minnie the Moocher, lyrics of 1930, 31 and 33 versions,

     She messed around with a bloke named Smoky.

   • 1958, Brendan Behan, Borstal Boy, page 281,

     It was a Cockney bloke who had never seen a cow till he came inside. Cragg said it took some blokes like that, and city fellows are the worse.

   • 2000, Elizabeth Young, Asking for Trouble, page 19,

     As her current bloke was turning out better than expected, I didn't see much of her lately.

2. (Britain) a man who behaves in a particularly laddish or overtly heterosexual manner.
3. (now chiefly Quebec, colloquial) An anglophone man.
4. (Australia) An exemplar of a certain masculine, independent male archetype.
   • 2000 May 5, Belinda Luscombe, “Cinema: Of Mad Max and Madder Maximus”, Time:

     ‘The Bloke’ is a certain kind of Australian or New Zealand male. […] The Classic Bloke is not a voluble beast. His speech patterns are best described as infrequent but colorful. […] ¶ The Bloke is pragmatic rather than classy. […] ¶ Most of all, the Bloke does not whinge.

• See Thesaurus:man

• sheila (Australia/New Zealand)

• blokey, blokeish

• “bloke” (US) / “bloke” (UK) in Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press.

• Kolbe

Borrowed from Spanish bloque, from French bloc, from Middle French bloc (“a considerable piece of something heavy, block”), from Old French bloc (“log, block”), from Middle Dutch blok (“treetrunk”), from Old Saxon *blok (“log”), from Proto-Germanic *blukką (“beam, log”), from Proto-Indo-European *bhulg'-, from *bhelg'- (“thick plank, beam, pile, prop”).

bloke

1. A block; a substantial, often approximately cuboid, piece of any substance.