# bekfi vagy bakfi



## DonAlejandro

Is one of these a word?
It is from 1911 and the handwriting and spelling are poor.
The context is "a vén bekfi" talking about an old man fathering children in the Ukraine.
I think it means "old goat" or "old son of a buck".
For "vén" would you use "old", "senile", or "senile, old"?
Someone told me that "bakfi" is slang for "punk".
"Bak" means "buck" or "ram", and "fi" means "young of".


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## Ateesh6800

DonAlejandro said:


> I think it means "old goat" or "old son of a buck". For "vén" would you use "old", "senile", or "senile, old"? Someone told me that "bakfi" is slang for "punk". "Bak" means "buck" or "ram", and "fi" means "young of".



Well, first off, I have never heard/seen this word. However, it seems to be in the right context, and it is easily possible that someone would use *bak + fi* = *bakfi* in a similar way as *kurafi*, which comes from *kurva fia* or _son of a whore_ (NB: _son of a bitch_!) to describe _a sexually promiscuous or at least sexually very active male_.

Another word used in this context is indeed *vén bakkecske* (we even have a proverb: *vén kecske is megnyalja a sót*, that is, _an old <male> goat is just as much keen on licking salt as a young one_, meaning that _old men also have sexual desires or an interest in encounters with younger women_).

*Bekfi* may be discarded as a misreading.

Would there be a chance to post/mail an image file of the original handwriting?

As for *bakfi* being a slang word... It is not a slang word _today_. By the flavour of it, if may have been a slang word, but never vulgar, of the late 19th/early 20th century middle class. But as I say, this is by the flavour of the word.

*Vén* is the same as *öreg* or *idős*, but while *idős* is PC, *öreg* is not quite PC and could be used somewhat offensively, *vén* is either used for objects (vén diófa is a common name for a pub/restaurant) or for people, but in this case it is either offensive or charged with humour/irony, such as in *vénasszony* (_old woman_), *vénkisasszony* (_old, unmarried woman_), ets. I would not "translate" it as senile; the expression _dirty old man_ comes to mind though.  We have "mocskos vénember" for that. But you could also play with words for a male goat if that conveys the meaning for an English-speaking audience.

*A.*


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## francisgranada

The component *-fi *was used in the past more frequently than today, also in case of some animals. I know for example *tikfi *(a dialectal version of *tyúkfi) from the 17th century with the meaning of _chick_. So words like _bakfi _could survive in the 19th-20th century with an expressive or figurative or humorous connotation. 

Indeed, _vén _and _bakfi _go together well, and for me the expression "a vén bakfi" sounds understanable even today (including its humorous/expressive sense).


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## DonAlejandro

Köszönöm szépen.


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