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 ie people who might be said to have a typically Mediterranean Southern EuropeanEastern European appearance without any facial or hairtexture characteristics associated with black people There are also socioeconomic 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 nonRomance languages and may be used to refer to people without negative connotation The Hungarian  referred to black Africans without any negative connotations until the s when its meaning changed under English influence In Latvian neris 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  Nonhuman 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 problemDefinition of nigger in the woodpile For example the May  issue of Scientific American page  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 midpoint of the th century It refers to a device that turns a log while it is being stripped of its bark This may be an offhand 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  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 Topsys SongLittle Topsys Song Sung by the Hutchinson family A modern recording Music by Asa B Hutchinson Boston Oliver Ditson Little Topsys Song Text and Sources Music by Asa Hutchinson and also by Henry Russell  written in about  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 Twains novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  a classic frequently taught in American schools revolves largely around the novels  uses of the word often referring to Jim Hucks raft mate Advocates of the book point out that use of the word is not intended to spread racist stereotypes but simply reflects the situation at the time of writing and that Jim is clearly depicted as a sympathetic character  Nigger in the Window is a book written by a young black girl who describes the world from her window  Slaves often pandered to racist assumptions by using the word nigger to their advantage in the selfdeprecatory artifice of Tomming Implicit was an unspoken reminder that a presumably inferior person or subhuman could not reasonably be held responsible for work performed incorrectly a fire in the kitchen or any similar offense It was a means of deflecting responsibility in the hope of escaping the wrath of an overseer or master Its use as a selfreferential term was also a way to avoid suspicion and put whites at ease A slave who referred to himself or another black as a nigger presumably accepted his subordinate role and posed no threat to white authority   by Agatha Christie  An example of this historical use in American literature occurs in Edgar Allan Poes short story The GoldBug  The narrator and a white character in the story use negro to refer to a black servant Jupiter while Jupiter himself uses nigger   Ian Fleming makes use of the term in his  novel Live and Let Die One of the chapters is called Nigger Heaven and two of the main characters James Bond and Felix Leiter make regular use of the word  Bram Stoker the Irish author best known for Dracula makes use of the word  times in his  novel The Lair of the White Worm Edgar Caswalls African servant Oolanga is often referred to as a nigger throughout the book   Agatha Christies novel And Then There Were None also known as Ten Little Indians originally appeared as Ten Little Niggers Among the classic novels of Joseph Conrad famous for his use of the word in Heart of Darkness is The Nigger of the Narcissus   Harper Lees  novel To Kill a Mockingbird also uses the term nigger throughout showing the widespread use during the s  Flannery OConnor wrote a short story named The Artificial Nigger a term one of the characters uses when he sees a lawn jockey  Other examples of literary usage in the United Kingdom during the late th and early th centuries suggest a more neutral usage of the term which can cause a problem when reading such books today when the word has such an offensive meaning  The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado uses the word nigger twice The executioner Koko in his song I have a little list sings of executing the nigger serenader and the others of his race Gilbert meant white performers performing minstrel songs in blackface a popular Victorian entertainment The Mikado in his song Let the Punishmen