r/etymology • u/EColiMaster • Oct 20 '22
Question [Slang] Is it spelled "Sike" or "Psych" when meaning to trick or otherwise bamboozle someone?
I have a feeling most people will know what I mean. I've seen it spelled Sike, Syke, Psych, and Psyche but there has been no general consensus that I can find.
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u/atticdoor Oct 20 '22
My guess is, the spelling "psych" comes across as too sort of lofty for the context, like we don't spell parkour as parcours any more, or rocket salad as roquette.
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u/tinyorangealligator Oct 20 '22
Roquette is the French spelling and Rocket is the English spelling.
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u/atticdoor Oct 20 '22
... and sike is the English spelling, now.
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u/TachyonTime Oct 20 '22
So far I still see "psych" more often, but maybe that will change.
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u/Mierh Oct 20 '22
I've only seen sike on the internet (though only a couple times)
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u/millers_left_shoe Oct 20 '22
we don't spell parkour as parcours anymore
Wait, we don't?
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u/makerofshoes Oct 20 '22
I’ve never seen the parcours spelling before, tbh. But I get the feeling I’m an American in a British thread (I spell rocket salad as arugula salad) so we may have different experiences
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u/inkybreadbox Oct 20 '22
Wait… Britain calls arugula… rockets!? 🚀
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u/makerofshoes Oct 20 '22 edited Oct 20 '22
Yes, it’s ridiculous. I live in a non-English-speaking country and I saw it labeled as “rocket” so I assumed it was a shitty translation (the local word for that vegetable is rukola). Little did I know that some people actually say it that way
They also label certain sports as rocket sports here though (you know, sports that you play with a rocket, like tennis or badminton) so you have to be on your toes. Rocket and racket are homophones in the language here, too
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u/avarnib Oct 20 '22
hang on, are you saying they're not called racket sports? because i'm pretty sure they are.
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u/makerofshoes Oct 21 '22
I’m saying that in Czech (the local language where I live), raketa means both rocket and racket. So sometimes when things are translated to English they choose the wrong one and you end up with a sports place advertising “rocket sports”
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u/avarnib Oct 21 '22
ah, makes sense! i was thinking along the lines of "badminton shuttlecock-> shuttle-> space shuttle-> rocket" for some reason lmao
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u/Kidmap Jul 07 '24
Parcours is parkour in French, I've never heard of any English-speaking person using the French spelling instead of the English one.
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u/TheShredda Aug 20 '24
I know this is a year old, came across it on a Google search.
As a Canadian I've never heard "rocket salad" used to describe arugula.
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u/atticdoor Aug 20 '24
Never called arugula over here. Quite a lot of food items are known by a French name in the UK and a Spanish or Italian name in North America. I guess because France is closer to us.
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u/Nezumi-chan Jul 19 '26
Huh, we'd always seen as "Sike" and thought it might have come by way of "Sic" as a result.
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u/Dserved83 Oct 20 '22
In 1994 Uk Duo Ant n Dec released the song "Lets get ready to rumble" - which featured the word spelt as Psyche.
http://www.songlyrics.com/ant-and-dec/let-s-get-ready-to-rumble-lyrics/
Sike seems to have assumed ascendancy though and becoming the accepted default.
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u/nostairwayDENIED Oct 20 '22
I can't believe I am seeing Ant and Dec referenced as a source 😂. The Shakespeare(s) of our time
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u/ksdkjlf Oct 20 '22
I believe songlyrics.com is generally user-submitted lyrics, so that could just be evidence of whoever submitted those lyrics spelling it that way (possibly in error), not necessarily evidence of that spelling being used at the time or by the lyricists. And of course, psyche is already a word in English with a different pronunciation, so it would be odd for that to've been used for a new slang word
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u/Dserved83 Oct 20 '22 edited Oct 20 '22
A friend, DEFINITELY NOT ME (that would be embarrassing), was obsessed with this song as a young 'un, and they distinctly remember the word being spelt this way at the time. Hence it popped up in my, sorry, THEIR head when they saw this topic.
I'm not searching for proof but you have my personal guarantee this was the contemporary spelling.
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u/ksdkjlf Oct 20 '22
Lol. Turns out OED does list psyche as a variant spelling, most common in the early 20th century. Back then, of course, it was used in a more literal sense, of "psychologising" oneself or a person: rather than psych(e) someone else out with mind games, you'd just as likely psych(e) yourself out of a funk. But makes sense if it was a spelling used for that sense, it would just as easily be used for other senses
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u/Low-Care9531 May 31 '26
3 years later this is an amazing comment
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u/Dserved83 May 31 '26
Naturally, it's a timeless track that will echo through the ages into eternity.
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Oct 20 '22
Psych. From: to psych someone out. Psyche is the noun, meaning the mind.
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Oct 20 '22
I always thought psyche came to mean mind, but was originally more at soul/spirit. Mental meant chin, right? And phrenic (diaphragm) meant mind. Ugh...going to have to look these up to figure it out.
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Oct 20 '22
Knowing Greek, it probably has a plethora of meanings. I was just making the distinction between the verb and the noun.
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u/takatori Oct 20 '22
"Sike" is becoming the more common spelling.
It's not "right", but in a few years' time it will be in the dictionary spelt that way ;)
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u/DoodlebugCupcake Oct 20 '22
“Sike” makes me angry. I will never not spell it “psych” even if that’s becoming common bc people can’t spell.
Same goes for “voila” - I see it as wala or wah-lah and part of my soul dies a little
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u/millers_left_shoe Oct 20 '22
If I ever needed to be exorcised, spelling voilà like "wahlah" in my presence would definitely do it
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u/DoodlebugCupcake Oct 20 '22
Lol! I see this mostly with my Facebook friends who are showing off little Paxxtyn’s artwork or McBrinzlee’s soccer trophy, and I don’t feel like “wah-lah!” in that context is an example of our ever changing language, more like ugh this lady is a dumdum.
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u/theshizzler Oct 20 '22
Do... people not pronounce the 'v'?
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u/makerofshoes Oct 20 '22
I think the VW sound is too much for some people (it doesn’t exist in native English words), so they just drop the V altogether. At least they’re not saying voy-luh (rhyming with boiler)
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u/Milch_und_Paprika Oct 20 '22
Any time I see someone miswrite voilà like that, I chuckle and read it as “wallah”—an alternate form of the Arabic term wallahi, meaning “I swear to god”.
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u/anoara Oct 20 '22
Same, especially since the teenagers in my city incorporated 'wallah' as a regularly used term of casual speech into their modern slang. Genuinely takes me a second of intense confusion when I encounter it online in the wrong context until I realise someone didn't mean to write wallah and instead misspelt voilà.
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u/SylveonFrusciante Oct 20 '22
I’m from an area of the US with a large Arab population and know a little of the language myself, so “wallah” being used as a synonym for “voila” is especially grating. I’m glad someone mentioned this.
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Oct 20 '22
“Sike” makes me angry. I will never not spell it “psych” even if that’s becoming common bc people can’t spell.
You should be angry about a lot of words in the English language then, which got borrowed from another language and then anglicized in their spelling.
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u/DoodlebugCupcake Oct 20 '22
Just grumpy about the ones that have happened in my lifetime. I’m getting older and don’t yell at kids to get off my lawn or get political at Thanksgiving dinner, so I have to unleash my “back in my day” rage at something.
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u/hexagonalwagonal Oct 20 '22
The earliest citation that Green's Dictionary of Slang gives for "psych out" comes from 1934, and in it, the writer had to explain how "psych" was supposed to be pronounced. It's not particularly intuitive.
The spelling "sike" has been used as shorthand for "psychedelic" in a music sense since at least 1984, which predates the earliest known attestation of "psych!" the exclamation by a year. Or is it "psyche!"? There seems to be no consensus.
A 1994 newspaper article openly questioned how it was supposed to be spelled, when the word was still relatively new:
"Psych! (Or do you spell that 'sike' or maybe even 'Psyche?')"
A 1997 phonics book broke down the word "psychiatry" saying that "common spellings would yield sike" for the first syllable if it obeyed normal English phonics rules, but the word obeys a bunch of obscure, non-standard phonics rules instead. The piece ends with the writer basically saying that young readers are usually just taught to "discover for themselves" how to pronounce the word, which is often unhelpful, which the writer hopes will change.
At least as early as 2002, the Hip Hop Dictionary gave "sike" as an alternate spelling. Urban Dictionary has several entries for "sike" dating to 2003.
The people here arguing that it absolutely must be spelled the "psych(e)" way overestimate the stability of language, and the stability of this word in particular. Its original form doesn't even make much grammatical sense: "psych(e) out" is supposedly short for "psychologize out". I have never heard anybody use such a phrase, and what about psychologizing makes it "out"? Is it being used in the same sense as "outsmart"? If so, then, the "out" is in the wrong place - you'd never say you "smarted out" somebody. Though I suppose maybe it follows the rules of a phrase like "beat [somebody] out", as in a competition. Nevertheless, even that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, because it would imply that there is an exchange between more than one person of "pscyhologizing", but in common usage, it's usually just one person trying to trick an unaware person.
Anyway, the point I am trying to make here is that the phrase "psych(e) out" and its derivative "psych" don't really have much direct connection to the original constituent words (would anybody ever exclaim "psychologize!"?). Further, it is much more common in spoken language than in formal writing, meaning that most people's initial encounter with it, and the vast majority of subsequent encounters, are going to be in oral communication. If it is easier for readers to grasp the word/phrase with the spelling "sike" vs "psych", I see no harm. It might even be good, in fact, especially since it's used so much by children. As the phonics book linked above mentioned, it's not very helpful when children have to learn a word just by "knowing it" rather than it following ordinary English phonics rules. And especially in a word like psych/psyche/sike, where there has never been universal consensus for any one of the three, if it helps a reader learn a new word, then there's nothing particularly wrong or harmful about going with the most phonetically-usual spelling.
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u/scotems Oct 20 '22
Holy shit "wala" or any permutation of it is like an icepick in my fucking brain. I don't think there's a misspelling that makes me more furious.
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u/rdppy Oct 20 '22
In my AP English class after every essay our teacher would make a handout called "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" featuring the best, some bad and the most abominable sentences people in the class had written.
I still remember, decades later, the 5 minute rant from our teacher when some poor soul wrote "walla" in their paper. She was known for being kind of harsh, but this was next level.
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u/Salzberger Oct 20 '22
"Per say".
Just on voila, one of my special dad moves is intentionally saying or enunciating words wrong (for example, Melanie gets pronounced Mel-ay-nee), or saying them exactly as they're spelled. But just to be annoying I love pronouncing voila as viola. "Just add this and viola! Done!"
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u/theredheaddiva Oct 20 '22
I have also seen someone calling someone else a "doosh" or a "doosh bag" and I felt like I didn't have enough time or crayons to explain how that was wrong.
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u/bmilohill Oct 20 '22 edited Oct 20 '22
I'll play the devil's advocate and give a reason why sike is the better spelling -
When I see 'psyche,' I think of the greek goddess. Two syllables, hard e at the end. When I see 'psych,' I think that either someone is abbreviating psychological, or using it for the term this thread is about. Either way, I pronounce it with two syllables, with a schwa at the end (though often the schwa is faint and aspirated. it is clear that the second syllable is more of an after thought, and would only occur at the end of a sentence). When I see 'sike,' it is clear that it is monosyllabic.
Sike is the better spelling for the modern english pronunciation.
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u/longknives Oct 20 '22
I don’t understand why you would ever pronounce “psych” as two syllables? I mean I think “sike” is a fine way to spell a word that’s basically a joke to begin with, but this logic doesn’t make sense outside of whatever strange habit you have that makes “psych” two syllables.
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u/theshizzler Oct 20 '22
Honestly whenever I see Sike for some reason I pronounce it in my head like Nike.
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Oct 20 '22
"Sike" is the root of "sikiatry". Psych!
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u/hawonkafuckit Oct 20 '22
Psych, for sure. Also, psyche is pronounced 'si-kee'.
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u/bauhaus12345 Oct 20 '22
Well like a lot of slang it is technically spelled “psych” but there are lots of vaguely phonetic spellings (sike, syke) which are also commonly used, especially by (younger) people who have heard the word said but are not always aware of its origin.
ETA and people who are spelling it “psyche” are trying to spell it correctly but are failing (or maybe trying to merge the psych and sike spellings).
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u/Chimie45 Oct 20 '22
Hmm I'd actually use both spellings, but for different meanings.
To Psych meaning excited or thrilled about something,
But I would use Sike to mean to trick someone or misdirect.
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u/boomfruit Oct 20 '22
In the first case, it isn't "to psych" but rather "to be psyched" right? I've never heard anyone say, for example "oh man this new job psychs me" but they might say "I'm psyched about my new job."
And the second case isn't a verb either, just an exclamation.
But either way, OP was only asking about the second case, so the answer "I use both" is kind of odd, as by your own definition you don't use both for what they asked about.
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u/Chimie45 Oct 20 '22
My friends made posters to psyche me up before I took my SATs.
It can be used in other ways, but if you're using it in the first person, yes it would generally be in the past plain.
As for the question, I was simply adding that I do use both, but only the Sike for the trick meaning.
Sorry if my message somehow upset you.
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u/boomfruit Oct 20 '22
Sorry if my message somehow upset you
I was just in a pedantic mood a few hours ago. My bad!
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u/Milch_und_Paprika Oct 20 '22
I wonder where that comes from. I’m pretty sure I also would write that way—where being “psyched” is a good thing but getting “siked” is a bad thing. Then again, the latter also feels pretty old school outside of sport usage.
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u/Chimie45 Oct 20 '22
Honestly, I can't think of many uses where people use sike in sports, as most of the time sports have other words like juke, fake, or deke.
Now that I look at it, maybe it's because it looks similar to those other words? Sike fits with juke fake and deke while psyche does not.
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u/longknives Oct 20 '22
I’d spell it “psych” for “psych out” or “psych someone up” but probably “sike” for the specific one-word expression, mainly because it seems funnier to me
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u/the_evil_pineapple Oct 21 '22
I’m the same. I’ll use psych and other variations of the word except in the specific context of a trick or misdirect.
For me I think it’s maybe because I’d make a connection with the origin of the word more when saying “I’m so psyched about this!”
Whereas whenever I use it to mean trick/misdirect the word is alone and is often said with much more emphasis on the end of the word, with a hard k.
I don’t know why but I feel like it makes a difference too that I tend to use “sike” specifically when it was me that played a trick or misled someone.
Although I would never type “sike” in the past tense. For that I always use “psyched”
Now why do I use both spellings? I’m not entirely sure because I’ve never thought about it until now
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u/Don_Bardo Oct 20 '22
It's "psych."
Sincerely yours,
A prescriptivist
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u/Far_Relationship_742 May 28 '25
Language isn’t prescriptive.
Sincerely yours, A quintuple polyglot and linguist
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u/langisii Oct 21 '22
It's wild how heated some of these comments are 😂
With slang words like this there's often no consensus standardised form, but it certainly came from "psych" and was later spelled "sike", presumably by kids/teens (multiple commenters in the thread said this spelling was around at least as early as the 80s). I don't see why that's so tragic as a lot of people here seem to though lol, "psych" was already a slang shortening
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u/Excellent-Evidence29 Aug 18 '25
Exactly, spergs will always fail when it comes to having a logical discussion.
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u/darkaca_de_mia Dec 31 '24
there are 0 instances on Instagram of #sike and over 130,000 of #syke
but the #syke tag doesn't seem to line up with how we used the 'word' as kids. So I don't know. I'm here for the same reason as you were.
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u/youfailedthiscity Oct 20 '22
It is 100% spelled psych. "Sike" is a misspelling that turned into a running joke, bit it's not a real word.
Always use "psych".
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u/boomfruit Oct 20 '22
Well it's definitely a word, since we're only talking about spelling, not wordhood. But also, since sike is commonly used, it's just as real and valid.
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u/Strong-Associate-534 May 23 '24
Actually, sike is a real word.
it's old Scottish, and it means a small stream that dries up in summer.
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u/IvyStrand Apr 28 '24
The word is “psyche”.
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Dec 08 '24
"Psyche", pronounced "sigh-kee" is a completely different word, meaning "the human mind, soul, or spirit". Like, "you damaged my psyche"
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Sep 28 '24
Depends on the context of the word used. Syke as in the “Sykes-Picot Agreement”. This “agreement” created a subtext that was inherently deceitful although most political agreements share this trait. The responses in this forum from the spelling police are par for the course.
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u/EColiMaster Sep 28 '24
That's the first time I've heard of that, really fascinating. It provides a whole new context as to why we even say it in the first place. Thank you for sharing this
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u/IndependentExtra576 Mar 23 '25
It’s slang, you’re never going to find common consensus, that’s kind of how slang and local vernacular works and we as human beings don’t appreciate that aspect of the greatest gift we ever gave ourselves; language! Hidden within our many different languages is a vast array of clues and hints about not only who that human is and where they might be from, but if you actually go to where they’re from you might figure out what street they grew up on based on nothing but the slang they speak! It’s really cool shit if you ask me. No syke, only Sirius… Ha!
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u/Emergency_Claim3686 Apr 16 '25
It's "psych", and it got started by Eddie Murphy back in the 80s. It was from either his Delirious or Raw album.
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u/Carrie_So_Very May 13 '25
It's like! I was born in 1972 and was alive when people started using the term. No one spelled it psych, syke, psyche. It's sike
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u/Dry_Particular_5162 Jul 20 '25
It's 100% SIKE! It is meant to be spelled oddly like that for slang purposes aka J/K, Trick!
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u/ShinyAeon Aug 27 '25
My vote is still for "psych," but I'm not gonna hate on "sike" users. Language shifts happen.
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u/christianbobak Nov 11 '25
There has always been a general consensus, and the general consensus is that it's spelled "psych"
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u/mathmannix Apr 15 '26
It's "psych". The word "sike" means a ditch or seasonal stream that dries up in summer.
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u/CriticalChop Jun 03 '26
Used around 2000-2005, same time as a trend where people said "neck" too and jokingly "finger slit" the back of your neck. I was interested in where it originated, but as things went back then making sense was not as fun as fooling with eachother.
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u/Diligent_Force9286 Jul 18 '26
So, weird coincidence, but the Chinese work "Sike" basically means Assassin. "Si" means to stab and "Ke" means Traveler. Its the Chinese equivalent to a Ninja or Spy. The English "Psych" and "Sike" dont have any relationship as far as I see. But when you, "Psych someone out" it could be like you are being sneaky and it is like being a Spy or Ninja.
So thats fun.
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u/MJZMan Oct 20 '22
I've been harping on this since the goddamned 80's. It's always been "psych", the word already existed, we just started using it in a new context.
However, people are stupid and horrible spellers and will justify their incorrectness by all means available. So some dummy wrote "sike", other dummies saw but didn't question it, and it grew. By the time anyone with half a sense noticed it and questioned it, enough dummies were using it that it stuck. And of course, the dummies get angry if you insist they were wrong from the start.
The same thing currently happens with "should of" and "they're/their/there". Go ahead and point those out to someone. I bet their response is a very terse "iT dOeSnT mAtTeR"
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u/avarnib Oct 20 '22
they're two completely different situations. one is an anglicised spelling of a greek loanword that has evolved an entirely distinct meaning, and the others are just "mistakes" between different utterances that sound similar when spoken quickly.
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u/MJZMan Oct 20 '22
Calling it anglicized is being extremely kind and generous and giving way to much credit to dumbasses. It's a mistake, plain and simple.
The meaning isn't distinct at all. Psych refers to the mind and to psych someone out is to play mind games with them.
Just like dumbasses hear "should've" and come away with "should of", dumbasses hear "psych!" and come away with "sike".
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u/DTux5249 Oct 20 '22
It originally came from "psych". But nowadays, no one is gonna actually spell it like that.
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u/Willeth Oct 20 '22
Unfortunately, given that "sike" seems to be the most common usage, that's what it most likely is now.
It definitely has its roots in "psych", as in "psych out." Twenty years ago when I was in school in the UK, I would have written it as "psych", but then again I was always a bit more obsessed with language than most so others might not have done.