Omi

Polari for a man, from Italian uomo; in old gay Polari often a straight man in particular, and the root of omi-palone, a gay man.

Omi is Polari for a man. A bona omi is a good-looking man, a dolly omi a sweet one, and an omi-palone, literally a man-woman, is a gay man. Spellings vary, omee, omy, homee, homi, because Polari lived in the mouth long before anyone wrote it down.

In the gay Polari of the mid-20th century, omi on its own often meant a straight man in particular, the kind of man who was not one of us. Every gay bar needed a word for the outsider at the next table, and omi was it.

Where it comes from

Omi comes from the Italian uomo, man. It reached English well before gay Polari: Green's Dictionary of Slang finds omee in Hotten's slang dictionary of 1859, meaning a master or landlord, as in "the omee of the casa", the man who runs the house or the pub. Henry Mayhew, describing London street life in the 1840s and 1850s, recorded homa for a man. From the street traders and traveling performers it passed into the slang of the theater and from there into the gay pubs and clubs where Polari flourished in the mid-20th century.

Family of words

• Omi-palone: a gay man, a man-woman.
• Naff omi: a straight man, literally an unappealing man; see naff.
• Omi of the casa: the man of the house, the landlord or the publican.
• Palone: the matching word for a woman.

How it is used today

Omi is one of the Polari words that never fully disappeared. It turns up in camp conversation, on drag stages and in the revival of interest in Polari that has been growing since the 1980s and 1990s. It is a warm word now, used about friends and boyfriends as often as about strangers.

For younger gay men who discover it, omi is a nice way of saying man that comes with a whole history attached: the knowledge that we once needed a secret word just to point at someone across a room.

Related terms