Pikey's are Irish gypsies similar to the Romani, and it's considered a slur. So yes, an ethnic group.
Pikey is a
pejorative slang term used mainly in
Britain[1][2] to refer to people who are of the Traveller Community. Pikey is also sometimes called a
piker in the
United States,
[3] but a piker in
Australia and
New Zealand means someone who refuses to do something within a group.
[4] It is not well received among
Irish Travellers or
Romanies, as it is considered an ethnic slur.
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikey
pikey
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3100 up,
443 down http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pikey#http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pikey# From the English "turnpike", the place where itinerent travellers and thieves would camp near a settlement.
Pikey is not a racial group, the term is used to describe anyone who lives in a caravan or shares the same values and "culture" of "the travelling community", and whose main sources of income are as follows:
Stealing cars, flogging roses in pubs for "childrens' charities", nicking lead off roofs, burgling garden sheds, blagging entry to old peoples house to rob them, doing dodgy tarmac jobs ("we've got some black stuff left over from a job up the road"), sometimes with mint imperials used as a substitute for white chippings, or, reportedly, using snow to lay slabs on when the sand ran out, stealing your bollocks if they weren't in a bag and anything else that's not nailed down and anything that is nailed down but will fit in the back of an untaxed Transit when nobody's looking.
Characterised by lurchers on a string, a unintelligible language that "isn't English, it isn't Irish, it's just Pikey" (source: Film: Snatch), a penchant for harecoursing, ketamine, lighter fuel, fighting in pubs and shopping at Lidl.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pikey
