Bloke (disambiguation)
- For the Slovenian municipality, see Bloke (Slovenia).
"Bloke" is a slang term for "man," much like "guy" or "dude." It is primarily used in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and is believed to derive from Shelta.
Generally, the term bloke refers to any hetrosexual male of any age.
Recently (during the last ten years or so) the term "blokish" as in "blokish humour" has occasionally cropped up. It describes the stereotypical "Men Behaving Badly" type of humour that is acceptably sexist - i.e. expected of such young men - and invariably funny rather than sarcastic or self-ironic. During the 1950s the word bloke was used extensively - dude being unheard of and guy pertaining to Guy Fawkes only - by adults while "chap" was used by schoolboys.
Australasian significance
While the term, strictly speaking, only means "man", the word "bloke" has been adopted into Australasian culture to mean substantially more than that. "Blokey" culture is the stereotypically masculine culture found outside of the metropolitan areas of Australia and New Zealand, the culture in which hard work, loyalty and not showing emotion are all valuable attributes. The word "bloke" is commonly used by the late Steve Irwin. A late night TV show called Blokesworld was developed to tap into this audience in the early 2000s. Blokesworld is a simular program to The Man Show and represents the term bloke as accurately as The Man Show represents men.
Québec significance
In Québec, the word bloke is used to specifically refer to Anglophones, most often in a derogatory manner. The also used moniker, «Tête carrée» (“square head”) is derived from bloke.