Meaning Of Phrase That Spooked Tommy Shelby In Last Night's Peaky Blinders

WARNING: This article contains spoilers about the first episode of season six of Peaky Blinders, so if you’re not up to date, it’s probably best that you stop reading now.

OK, so now that the dust has settled on episode one of the final ever series of Peaky Blinders, things have been set up nicely for the forthcoming episodes.

Of course, there was a touching tribute to Aunt Polly, played since the start by Helen McCrory, who died suddenly last year.

However, there was also a lot of action to digest from start to finish, including the new dynamic between Michael and Tommy, and the introduction of Boston-based mobsters who are – as you can imagine – up to no good.

Still, the most intriguing thing for those who have watched it took place right towards the end of the episode.

Lizzie explained to a now-sober Tommy that their daughter Ruby was ill and that she had been delirious, meaning that the family couldn’t travel to North America to see him.

In passing, she said that Lizzie had been muttering words in Romani during her delirium, thinking that she’d picked them up through Johnny Dogs’ children whom she had played with.

BBC One

Those words were ‘Tikna Mora O Beng’ and they obviously meant something pretty serious to Tommy.

He freaked out upon hearing that she’d uttered the words, and seemed increasingly concerned about her also witnessing a vision of a green-eyed man.

After passing on instructions frantically to Lizzie, Tommy announced that he’d be coming back to Birmingham to be with them instead.

But – fans have been clamouring to find out – what does the mysterious phrase mean?

Well, the truth is that there are many dialects within Romani cultures, so we can’t be entirely confident in what the exact meaning is.

‘Tickna’ – according to Screen Rant – means ‘little girl’ or ‘daughter’, whereas ‘Beng’ is a word that means a supernatural being of some sort.

Many consider it to be the devil.

BBC One

‘Mora’ can be translated as ‘friend’, but it also has links to the Latin word ‘mors’ which means death.

So, we can roughly approximate the phrase as ‘little girl or daughter’, ‘friend or death’, and ‘devil or supernatural being’.

That would certainly go some way to explaining why Tommy was so spooked by the whole thing.

We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next week.

Speaking of which, Peaky Blinders’ sixth and final season continues on BBC One at 9:00pm next Sunday.