"migrant agricultural worker," especially (but not exclusively) one driven from farms in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl, 1938, short for U.S. state of Oklahoma.
"Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty son-of-a-bitch." [John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath," 1939]
Entries linking to okie
Oklahoma
state in southwestern U.S., from Choctaw (Muskogean), literally "red people," from okla "nation, people" + homma "red." Coined by Choctaw scholar and Presbyterian minister Allen Wright (1826-1885), later principal chief of the Choctaw Nation, and first used in the Choctaw-Chickasaw treaty of April 28, 1866. Organized as a U.S. territory 1889; admitted as a state 1907. Related: Oklahoman.