" and sounding similar to the English word nigger are used without the disparaging connotation the word holds in English. The French cognate , however, commonly used during the colonial period, is similarly considered offensive, whereas  (literally, ""black"") is the standard word, with the Anglicism black being a common slang term.

Interestingly, in some places these words refer to people with an only slightly darker appearance than those native to Northern Europe, i.e. people who might be said to have a typically Mediterranean, Southern European/Eastern European appearance without any facial or hair-texture characteristics associated with black people. There are also socio-economic reasons behind this as southern Europeans but particularly eastern Europeans are stereotypically deemed more backwards and less well off than their northern European cousins.

Forms ultimately derived from Latin  have been borrowed into various non-Romance languages, and may be used to refer to people without negative connotation; The Hungarian  referred to black Africans without any negative connotations until the 1990s when its meaning changed under English influence. In Latvian, ""nēģeris"" is still referred to black Africans without any derogatory meaning. The word nigger, typically with the same spelling and more or less similar pronunciation, also appears as a loanword in languages other than English and has the same racist connotations as the English word. In Nazi propaganda, the German compound niggerjazz was used as a derogatory term for jazz music, which Nazi ideology held was a degenerate form of music. In Yiddish, ""shvartzer"", meaning 'black' is considered offensive while ""neger"" is the standard word.

Non-human uses
In the past, nigger was sometimes used as a synonym for ""defect"", deriving from the phrase ""nigger in the woodpile"", which originally referred to escaping slaves hiding among woodpiles being transported on trains. It came to mean some unseen problem.Definition of nigger in the woodpile For example, the May 1886 issue of Scientific American, page 308 said, ""The consequence of neglect might be that what the workmen call ‘a nigger’ would get into the armature, and burn it so as to destroy its service.""

The term nigger was used in lumber mills until the mid-point of the 20th century. It refers to a device that turns a log while it is being stripped of its bark. This may be an off-hand reference to the prejudicial use of the word, as until the machine was invented, this was considered a job too dangerous for anyone other than a black man.

Literary uses
Nigger has a long history of controversy in literature. Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and writer famous as a supporter of the Harlem Renaissance, provoked debate and some protest from the African American community by titling his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. The controversy centered on the use of the word in the title and fueled the sales of the hit novel. Of the controversy, Langston Hughes wrote:

The poem Little Topsy's SongLittle Topsy's Song: Sung by the Hutchinson family A modern recording. Music by Asa B. Hutchinson(1823–1884), Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1853Little Topsy's Song: Text and Sources Music by Asa Hutchinson and also by Henry Russell (1801–1900) written in about 1845 by Eliza Cook has the first stanza
'Topsy neber was born, / Neber had a moder; / Specks I growed a nigger brat, / Just like any oder.

The famous controversy over Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), a classic frequently taught in American schools, revolves largely around the novel's 215 uses of the word, often referring to Jim, Huck's raft mate.{{cite web
| title= Adventures