11/9/2015 Nigger ­ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Nigger From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the word and its history. For the colloquial variant, see nigga. For other uses, see Nigger (disambiguation). In the English language, the word "nigger" is an ethnic slur, usually directed at black people. The word originated as a neutral term referring to people with black skin,[1] as a variation of the Spanish and Portuguese noun negro, a descendant of the Latin adjective niger ("black").[2] It was often used disparagingly, and by the mid­ twentieth century, particularly in the United States, its usage became unambiguously pejorative, a racist insult. Accordingly, it began to disappear from popular culture, and its continued inclusion in classic works of literature has sparked controversy. In the contemporary United States and United Kingdom, using the word is taboo, and it is often replaced with the euphemism "the N­ word". "Nigga" is sometimes used among African Americans in a non­derogatory sense or as a term of endearment. Contents 1885 illustration from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, captioned "Misto Bradish's nigger" 1 Etymology and history 2 Usages 2.1 British 2.2 North American 2.2.1 Cultural 2.2.2 Political 2.2.3 Sport 2.2.4 Nature 2.3 Denotational extension 2.4 Other languages 2.5 Literary https://en.wikipedia.or2g/.w6iki/PNioggpeur lar culture 1/18 11/9/2015 Nigger ­ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2.6 Popular culture 2.6.1 Cinema 2.6.2 Literature 2.6.3 Music 2.6.4 Theatre 2.6.5 Comedy 2.6.6 Translations 2.6.6.1 "Nigger­brown" colored furniture 2.6.6.2 "Nigger brown" pants 2.7 Derivations 2.7.1 Place names 3 Derivatives 3.1 The N­word euphemism 3.2 Homophones 3.3 Intragroup versus intergroup usage 4 See also 5 Footnotes 6 References 7 External links Etymology and history Main article: Negro The variants neger and negar, derive from the Spanish and Portuguese word negro (black), and from the now­pejorative French nègre (negro). Etymologically, negro, noir, nègre, and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum, the stem of the Latin niger (black) (pronounced [ˈniɡer] which, in every other grammatical case, grammatical gender, and grammatical number besides nominative masculine singular, is nigr­, the r is trilled). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger 2/18 11/9/2015 Nigger ­ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In the Colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony.[3] Later American English spellings, neger and neggar, prevailed in a northern colony, New York under the Dutch, and in metropolitan Philadelphia's Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities; the African Burial Ground in New York City originally was known by the Dutch name "Begraafplaats van de Neger" (Cemetery of the Negro); an early US occurrence of neger in Rhode Island, dates from 1625.[4] An alternative word for African Americans was the English word, "Black", used by Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Among Anglophones, the word nigger was not always considered derogatory, because it then denoted "black­skinned", a common Anglophone usage.[5] Nineteenth­century English (language) literature features usages of nigger without racist connotation, e.g. the Joseph Conrad novella The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897). Moreover, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain created characters who used the word as contemporary usage. Twain, in the autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi (1883), used the term within quotes, indicating reported usage, but used the term "negro" when speaking in his own narrative persona.[6] During the fur trade of the early 1800s to the late 1840s in the Western United States, the word was spelled "niggur", and is often recorded in literature of the time. George Fredrick Ruxton often included the word as part of the "mountain man" lexicon, and did not indicate that the word was pejorative at the time. "Niggur" was evidently similar to the modern use of dude, or guy. This passage from Ruxton's Life in the Far West illustrates a common use of the word in spoken form—the speaker here referring to himself: "Travler, marm, this niggur's no travler; I ar' a trapper, marm, a mountain­man, wagh!"[7] It was not used as a term exclusively for blacks among mountain men during this period, as Indians, Mexicans, and Frenchmen and Anglos alike could be a "niggur".[8] Linguistically, in developing American English, in the early editions of A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806), lexicographer Noah Webster suggested the neger new spelling in place of negro.[9] By the 1900s, nigger had become a pejorative word. In its stead, the term colored became the mainstream alternative to negro and its derived terms. Abolitionists in Boston, Massachusetts, posted warnings to the Colored People of Boston and vicinity. Writing in 1904, journalist Clifton Johnson documented the "opprobrious" character of the word nigger, emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than "colored."[10] Established as mainstream American English usage, the word colored features in the organizational title of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, reflecting the members' racial identity preference at the 1909 foundation. In the Southern United States, the local American English dialect changes the pronunciation of negro to nigra. By the late 1960s, the social change achieved by groups in the United States such as the Civil Rights Movement (1955–68), had legitimized the racial identity word black as mainstream American English usage to denote black­skinned Americans of African ancestry. In the 1990s, "Black" was displaced in favor of the compound blanket term African American. Moreover, as a compound word, African American resembles the vogue word Afro­American, an early­1970s popular usage. Currently, some black Americans continue to use the word nigger, often spelled as nigga and niggah, without irony, either to neutralize the word's impact or as a sign of solidarity.[11] Usages British https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger 3/18 11/9/2015 Nigger ­ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In the United Kingdom and the Anglophone world, nigger denoted the dark­skinned (non­white) African and Asian (i.e., from India or nearby) peoples colonized into the British Empire, and "dark­skinned foreigners" in general. In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), H. W. Fowler states that applying the word nigger to "others than full or partial negroes" is "felt as an insult by the person described, & betrays in the speaker, if not deliberate insolence, at least a very arrogant inhumanity"; but the second edition (1965) states: "N. has been described as 'the term that carries with it all the obloquy and contempt and rejection which whites have inflicted on blacks.'". Victorian writer Rudyard Kipling used it in 'How the Leopard Got His Spots' and 'A Counting­Out Song' to illustrate the usage of the day. Likewise, P. G. Wodehouse used the phrase "Nigger minstrels" in Thank You, Jeeves (1934), the first Jeeves–Bertie novel, in admiration of their artistry and musical tradition. See also below under "Literary". As recently as the 1950s, it may have been acceptable British usage to say niggers when referring to black people, notable in mainstream usages such as Nigger Boy brand candy cigarettes,[12] and the color nigger brown or simply nigger (dark brown);[13] however, by the 1970s the term was generally regarded as racist, offensive and potentially illegal along with "nig­nog", and "golliwog". Agatha Christie's book Ten Little Niggers was first published in London in 1939 and continued to appear under that title until the early 1980s, when it became And Then There Were None.[14][15] North American Cultural Addressing the use of nigger by black people, Cornel West said in 2007, "There's a certain rhythmic seduction to the word. If you speak in a sentence, and you have to say cat, companion, or friend, as opposed to nigger, then the rhythmic presentation is off. That rhythmic language is a form of historical memory for black people... When Richard Pryor came back from Africa, and decided to stop using the word onstage, he would sometimes start to slip up, because he was so used to speaking that way. It was the right word at the moment to keep the rhythm together in his sentence making."[16] Contemporarily, the implied racism of the word nigger has rendered its usages social taboo. In the United States, magazines and newspapers often do not use it but instead print "family­friendly", censored versions, usually "n*gg*r", "n**ger", "n——", and "the N­word";[17] however, historians and social activists, such as Dick Gregory, criticize the euphemisms and their usage as intellectually dishonest because using the euphemism "the N­word" instead of nigger robs younger generations of Americans of the full history of black people in America. Political In explaining his refusal to be conscripted to fight the Vietnam War (1965–75), professional boxer Muhammad Ali said, "No Vietcong ever called me nigger";[18] later, his modified answer was the title No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger (1968) of a documentary about the front­line lot of the U.S. Army Black soldier in combat in Vietnam.[19] An Ali biographer reports that, when interviewed by Robert Lipsyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger 4/18 11/9/2015 Nigger ­ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in 1966, the boxer actually said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong".[20] The word can be invoked politically for effect.