Tag Archives: Ernest A. Tonk

Boy, talk about a confused and strained derivation for a phrase: Honky tonk sure has one. Does it come from the sound of honking geese misleading a bunch of entertainment-seeking cowboys, Ernest A. Tonk’s upright grand pianos, or a slur for whites taken from bohunk or hunky? As for the latter, I am willing to concede Juke joint, or Juke, to Southern black culture, but not Honky tonk, or Tonk, which seems to have originated among whites in Texas and Oklahoma. Once upon a time, neither a juke or a tonk was considered very reputable, but in recent decades both have become so romanticized as to be reliably commercial.