nigger
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: nĭgʹər
ipa: /ˈnɪɡə(ɹ)/
enpr: nĭgʹər
ipa: /ˈnɪɡɚ/
rhymes: -ɪɡə(ɹ)
Forms: form: niggers
form: n-word
form: nigga
form: niggah
form: nigguh
Etymology: From Latin niger (“black”). Compare Danish neger, Swedish neger, German Neger, Dutch neger. First use appears c. 1577, in the writings of Edward Hellowes (fl. 1574–1601). The expected Modern English pronunciation would be with /iː/; compare neger. The modern pronunciation with /ɪ/ may be due to influence from the Latin etymon (compare the older Southern US pronunciation of negro with /ɪ/), but compare the dialectal American pronunciations of eagle and eager as /ˈɪɡəl/ and /ˈɪɡɚ/.
Senses: examples: text: It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger—but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither.
ref: 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XV, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 133:
text: “Othello with his occupation gone,” she teased. “Othello was a nigger,” I said.
ref: 1929, Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, page 274:
text: You are not even a nigger, you are an African.
ref: 2004, Hotel Rwanda, spoken by Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte):
text: In a particularly sad portion of the Wells Report, Jonathan Martin laments being derided as a nigger to his face by Richie Incognito.
ref: 2014 March 5, Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Politics and the African-American Human Language”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 12 Mar 2014:
text: One day our troop was charged with building a monkey bridge, a kind of rope bridge built with logs. As we completed it and admired our work, a troop of white kids passed by and proceeded to call us niggers, shouting that niggers couldn’t build a bridge.
ref: 2015 July 23, The Editors, “Your Stories of Racism: An Earlier Era”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 28 Jul 2015:
hypernyms: word: person
glosses: A black person; a person of black African descent.
examples: text: There's black people, and there's niggers. And niggers have got to go. Every time black people wanna have a good time, ign'ant-ass niggers fuck it up.
ref: 1996, Chris Rock: Bring the Pain, Chris Rock (actor):
text: See, niggers are followers, blacks normally lead.
Niggers call blacks "whitewash" soon as they on the scene.
ref: 2008, “The N Word”, in Greydon Square (music), The CPT Theorem:
text: Blacks stayed at home during the civil rights march. Niggers are the ones that marched.
ref: 2010 April 13, Kitty Kelley, quoting an unnamed town resident, Oprah: A Biography, New York, N.Y.: Crown, →ISBN, →OL, page 193:
text: ...and as I was leaving it occurred to me. "Hey, hey, Renee, quick question[...] Why is it that I can say the word ‘nigger’ with impunity but I can't say the word ‘faggot’?" And she said, "Because, David, you are not gay." I said, "Well, Renee... I'm not a nigger either."
ref: 2021, Dave Chapelle, The Closer:
hypernyms: word: person
glosses: A black person; a person of black African descent.
A person of black African descent who behaves badly or unconventionally (whether the speaker approves or disapproves).
examples: text: He never lost his appetite -
 He bigger grew and bigger;
 And proved, with every inch of height,
 A nigger is a nigger.
ref: 1880 June 19, Henry Kendall, “My Piccaninny”, in The Australian Town and Country Journal, page 28, column 4:
text: Many of the rank and file had no better conception of the proud and sensitive Maori than was implied in the degrading ‘nigger’ theory, invariably applied by the unthinking Briton to all coloured races.
ref: 1902, George Stoddart Whitmore, The Last Maori War in New Zealand..., page vi:
text: "The public have taken no interest in the matter up to now, but this letter of Challenger's in the Times will make them wake up, I'm thinking." "And this about Sumatra?" "Well, it's a long cry from a blurred line in a spectrum to a sick nigger in Sumatra. And yet the chiel has shown us once before that he knows what he's talking about."
ref: 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
text: Besides, where are you going to find a rajah who doesn’t understand Bank of England notes? These niggers aren’t savages, not by any means. Why, lots of them have been to Oxford.
ref: 1932, Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase:
text: [H]e commenced to kill Indians. We needed no second invitation. God it was a butchery. At the first fire we killed a round dozen and we did not let up. Before the last poor nigger reached the bottom of the slope there was fifty-eight of them lay slaughtered among the gravels. They just slid down the slope like chaff down a hopper, some turned this way, some that, and they made a chain about the base of the mountain
ref: 1985, Cormac McCarthy, “Chapter 10”, in blood Meridian, Random House, →ISBN, →OCLC:
text: At Crescent Lake in Oneida County, Hubert Locke, who is black and serves as the Dean of the University of Washington's School of Public Affairs, was confronted with words to the effect of, "Now the Commission has a nigger working for them" and "I guess there are two kinds of niggers—red niggers and black niggers"[...] These blatant manifestations of racism directed toward Mr. Locke serve to illustrate the racist attitudes experienced daily by tribal members.
ref: 1988, James H. Schlender, quotee, “Written Testimony of James H. Schlender, Executive Administrator, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, May 18, 1988”, in Anti-Indian Violence: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, second session, May 4 and 18, 1988, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, published 1989, →OCLC, page 197:
glosses: A member of any typically dark-skinned people (now especially in combinations like prairie nigger or sand nigger).
examples: text: “Snoop Dog!” one of them yelled. “That’s my nigga from Long Beach, man.”
ref: 1997, McKinley Lee, Chosen by Fate: My Life inside Death Row Records, →ISBN:
text: I wonna say whassup to all my Niggers, you know, peace and one love.
ref: 2001 Autumn-Winter, Awad Ibrahim, quoting ‘Sam’, “Hey, whadap homeboy?”, in Taboo, page 94:
text: I had overheard him greet a buddy who called him on the phone with "Yo, nigger, what's up?"
ref: 2002 January 13, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, “"Loaded Language", a review of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy”, in Washington Post, page BW06:
qualifier: African-American Vernacular
glosses: A friend, particularly a fellow black person (often as an informal term of address).
examples: text: People be surprised. I have friends who're all kinds a letters. Everybody loves me an' I love everybody. I got friends who are Ls, I got friends who are Bs, and I got friends who are Gs. But the Ts hate my fucking guts. And I don't blame 'em! It's not their fault. It's mine. I can't stop tellin' jokes about these niggas.
ref: 2021, Dave Chapelle, The Closer:
qualifier: especially African-American Vernacular; otherwise offensive; especially African-American Vernacular; otherwise offensive
glosses: A person of any kind (particularly as a term of abuse).
examples: text: The governor made it into office by campaigning against the niggers. And people should understand who the niggers are. It's the elderly one week. Then it's those on public assistance. Now he sees women as niggers, and he's trying to do them in.
ref: 1979 April 14, Jil Clark, Mel King, King Axes Women's Commission, page 1:
text: It's time for somebody to lead all of America's Niggers," he said at the Capitol Hill press conference when Shirley Chisholm announced she was running for president, "and by this I mean the Young, the Black, the Brown, the Women, the Poor—all the people who feel left out of the political process. If we can put the Nigger Vote together, we can bring about some real change in this country."
ref: 1972, Ron Dellums, Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, →ISBN, page 58:
text: Woman Is the Nigger of the World
ref: 1972, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, “Woman Is the Nigger of the World”:
glosses: A member of a group that is oppressed or marginalized in the manner of black people.
raw_tags: in comparisons
glosses: Any of various dark animals:
Any member of species Girella tricuspidata (luderick).
examples: text: Nigger (Male) Orsotriaena medus moira Waterhouse and Lyell. 1914.
ref: 1932, Gustavus Athol Waterhouse, What Butterfly is That?: A Guide to the Butterflies of Australia, page 112:
text: The Nigger is a common butterfly in Singapore and can be found in the company of bush browns.
ref: 2010, Khew Sin Khoon, A Field Guide to the Butterflies of Singapore, page 69:
glosses: Any of various dark animals:
A dark brown nymphalid butterfly, Orsotriaena medus, of south Asia, southeast Asia, and Australia.
topics: fishing
hobbies
lifestyle
glosses: Any of various dark animals:
A kind of sea cucumber, Holothuria forskali, the cotton-spinner.
examples: text: To this group belongs the nigger, or black caterpillar of the turnip, which is often in sufficient numbers to do much mischief.
ref: 1873, Nature, volume 7, page 448:
glosses: Any of various dark animals:
The larva of the turnip sawfly, an agricultural pest.
examples: text: Now to locate the portion of the machine which contains the "nigger."
ref: 1892, Western Electrician, volume 11, page 72:
topics: business
electrical-engineering
electricity
electromagnetism
energy
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: An impurity in the covering of an electrical conductor which serves to make a partial short circuit, and thus becomes sufficiently heated to burn and destroy the insulation.
examples: text: A sawyer will come along and be touted and recommended as the best in the country when his chief qualifications will be his ability to jerk the carriage back and forth in a hurry without striking the bumper or to turn the log with the nigger […]
ref: 1918, Leonard L. Shertzer, How to Build and Operate a Sawmill, page 20:
text: The word “nigger” means to the backwoodsman a small log placed when blazing, across large logs to fire them; by tending the fire so made, large logs are divided more quickly than by an ax—consequently “a nigger in a woodpile” means something which destroys it and not, as I had supposed, our African brother.
ref: [1919, Laura Fletcher Hodges, Early Indianapolis, page 16:
glosses: A strong iron-bound timber with sharp teeth or spikes protruding from its front face, forming part of the machinery of a sawmill, and used in canting logs, etc.
examples: text: Well, it's a big heavy line, and you operate the nigger — capstan it's also called — by steam. You wrap your line around that and keep taking in the slack, and that draws up them things.
ref: 1983, Goldenseal, volume 9, page 20:
glosses: A steam-capstan on some Mississippi river boats, used to haul the boat over bars and snags by a rope fastened to a tree on the bank.
examples: text: Care should be taken to check visually from the position occupied by the subject and from the camera also, to ascertain that the nigger is positioned correctly and does not obstruct the picture area.
ref: 1961, Peter Snow, Electronic Flashlight Photography, page 114:
topics: broadcasting
film
media
television
glosses: A black screen used in conjunction with the camera to block light or produce special lighting effects.
Synonyms: word: blackie
word: bootlip
word: brillo pad
word: coon
word: darkie
word: groid
word: jigaboo
word: jogger
word: jungle bunny
word: kaffir
word: moon cricket
word: nigga
word: nig-nog
word: porch monkey
word: Sambo
word: shitskin
word: smoked Irishman
word: spade
word: spearchucker
word: spook
word: tar baby
word: wog
sense: friend
word: homie
sense: friend
word: nigga
Derived terms: antinigger
chigger
criminigger
curry nigger
Dead Nigger Creek
deniggerization
deniggerize
doublenigger
farm nigger
field nigger
glownigger
house nigger
magic nigger
McNiggers
n****r
n-bomb
nig
nigcel
nigfant
nigga
niggacide
niggah
Nigger
niggerati
niggeration
niggerbabble
nigger baby
niggerball
niggerbitch
niggerboy
nigger-brown
nigger chaser
nigger choker
niggercide
niggerdick
niggerdom
niggerese
niggeresque
niggeress
niggerette
niggerfaggot
niggerfied
nigger-fish
niggerfuck
nigger-fucker
niggerfucker
niggerfuxate
niggerfuxated
niggerfuxation
nigger gallery
niggergirl
niggergram
nigger head
nigger-head
Nigger Head
niggerhead
nigger heaven
niggerhood
Niggeria
Niggerian
nigger in the fence
nigger in the woodpile
niggerisation
niggerise
niggerish
niggerism
niggeritis
niggerization
niggerize
nigger-killer
nigger killer
nigger-knocker
nigger knocker
nigger knocking
Niggerland
niggerless
niggerlike
niggerling
niggerlips
nigger logic
nigger lottery
nigger lover
nigger-lover
niggerly
niggerman
nigger moment
niggerness
nigger nose
niggerologist
niggerology
niggerosity
niggerous
nigger pennies
niggerphile
nigger pool
nigger-rich
nigger rich
nigger rig
nigger-rig
nigger-rigged
niggership
nigger shooter
niggerskin
niggerspeak
nigger stick
nigger tobacco
nigger toe
Niggertown
niggertry
nigger twist
nigger university
Niggerville
niggerwhine
niggery
niggeryard
niggie
niggy
niglet
niglette
nig-nog
nigtard
nikka
nizzle
n-word
Onigger
outnigger
pigger
pizza nigger
plantation nigger
potato nigger
prairie nigger
red-nigger
red nigger
rice nigger
sand-nigger
sand nigger
shitnigger
spigger
sweat like a nigger
sweat like a nigger on election day
swigger
taco nigger
teenigger
timber nigger
tree nigger
white nigger
wigger
yellow nigger
zigger
zionigger
Related terms: negro
Negro
nigra
Nigra
whigga
whigger
wigga
wigger