yookay

Eye dialect for UK. Originally coined on the /pol/ and /int/ boards of 4chan before being popularised by X user @kunley_drukpa in 2023. Possibly a variant of "Ukay" coined by journalist Peter Hitchens in 2010.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /juːˈkeɪ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪ

the yookay

1. (UK politics, derogatory) The United Kingdom, as having been impacted by perceived failures in multicultural policy.
   • 2025 April 23, Nicholas Harris, “Anarchy in the ‘yookay’”, in The New Statesman‎^[1], archived from the original on 29 April 2025:

     Rucksacked Deliveroo cyclists in convoy, swarming along road and pavement. Tattered, pockmarked high streets, enlivened only by phone shops, chicken shops and random outbursts of violence. And, most prominently, black and South Asian men, the former threateningly ski-masked and communicating exclusively through drill rap, the latter combining an aggressively masculine form of Islam with inner-city gang culture. Welcome to “the yookay”, the verbal and social corruption of “the UK” that so much of the political right believes it sees in modern Britain.

   • 2025 May 5, Luca Watson, “Nobody likes the yookay aesthetic”, in The Critic‎^[2], archived from the original on 21 May 2025:

     The multicultural Britain of today, or “yookay” as it has come to be disparagingly called, has since taken on a character all of its own, a long way from the “narrow, English-dominated” society derided by the Parekh Report.