folx

English

Etymology

Variant of folks; while the word was already gender-neutral, the suffix -x is a deliberate social signal of awareness of sexual minorities. Compare English Latinx.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

folx pl (plural only)

1. Alternative spelling of folks [1600s], later especially an eye dialect spelling of folks, representing African-American Vernacular English. [1800s]
   • 1628 February 26, Thomas Button, in a letter to the Lord Vicount Dorchester, quoted in Some account of sir Robert Mansel ... and of sir Thomas Button (George Thomas Clark, Dowlais, 1883), p. 86:

     I presume yo^r lo. will fynde to be very stronge besides the qualitie of the peticonars to be lookte vppon, whoe if they be noe other then as folx [also fox] is stilde mear mariners, it cannot promise muche of their extraordinarie performancis, as hath bin made appeare formerlye in this perticuler designe, [...]

   • 1857, Julius Caesar Hannibal, Black Diamonds, Or, Humor, Satire, and Sentiment, page 183:

     De kommitte told me dere wus a great gedderin ob de culored folx at Brudder Jonson's Eatin House, [...]

   • 1879, M. Star, in The American Temperance Cyclopaedia of History (Joseph Beaumont Wakeley), page 185, ostensibly quoting one Missa Param:

     If some do, da hypocrites, and dat don't militate 'gains de siety; for cause da some hypocrites, dat proves dat some good folx.

2. (now chiefly Internet slang, especially in LGBT and communities of color) Folks; people.
   • 2004, Maximum Rocknroll, issue 255:

     This time around the fine folx of Rocktober bring us the greatest rocknroll^[sic] moments in television history.

   • 2018, Joshua Whitehead, Jonny Appleseed, →ISBN:

     I write this book with the goal of showing you that Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous folx are not a “was,” that we are [...still present.] […]

Anagrams

• FLOX, Flox, flox