Yardie
/ˈjɑːdi
/informal
noun
1(Among Jamaicans) a fellow Jamaican.I just wanted to say hi and to tell the other Yardies to stay safe....
- Big up to all the Yardies who are representing for us in Italy!
- Since she was a Yardie like myself, I was trying to help her out.
2(In the UK) a member of a Jamaican or West Indian gang of criminals: [as modifier]: Yardie violence...
- It's not us nice white middle class people who are to blame, it's those nasty Yardies!
- She must be the only person in the UK unaware of the gun crime, perpetrated by Yardie gangsters in our major cities.
- Theres a more anti police beat officer feeling to as the area is beginning to be run by the West Indian Yardies and crime syndicates.
adjective [attributive]
Of or characteristic of Jamaicans: comparison of cockney and Yardie slang...
- So I shook my legs and did a few Yardie moves… just like what Beenie Man did tonight.
- Him lucky seh it wasn't a Jamaican parent that was holding that baby or there may well have been a true Yardie style lynching on dat rass flight.
- Mr Glass added: ‘He described the killer as having a Yardie or Jamaican accent.’
Origin
1980s: from Jamaican English yard 'house, home' (see yard2 (sense 4 of the noun)).