nigger
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: broadcasting
business
electrical-engineering
electricity
electromagnetism
energy
engineering
film
fishing
hobbies
lifestyle
media
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
television
Etymology: Borrowed from Middle French nègre (“a black person”), from Spanish negro. Ultimately from Latin niger (“black”), thus a doublet of negro and noir. 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/. Compare Danish neger, Swedish neger, German Neger, Dutch neger. First use appears c. 1577, in the writings of Edward Hellowes (fl. 1574–1601).
Inflected forms:
form: niggers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: n****r
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: n-word
pos: noun
tags: alternative
euphemistic
form: nigga
pos: noun
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
form: niggah
pos: noun
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
form: nigguh
pos: noun
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
form: niggers
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: niggering
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: niggered
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: niggered
pos: verb
tags: past
form: n****r
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: n-word
pos: verb
tags: alternative
euphemistic
form: nigga
pos: verb
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
form: niggah
pos: verb
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
form: nigguh
pos: verb
tags: alternative
pronunciation-spelling
Senses:
gloss: A black person; a person of black African descent.
pos: noun
tags: ethnic
offensive
slur
vulgar
examples: 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.
“Othello with his occupation gone,” she teased. “Othello was a nigger,” I said.
Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
You are not even a nigger, you are an African.
In a particularly sad portion of the Wells Report, Jonathan Martin laments being derided as a nigger to his face by Richie Incognito.
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.
gloss: A black person; a person of black African descent.
pos: noun
tags: ethnic
offensive
slang
slur
vulgar
examples: 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.
See, niggers are followers, blacks normally lead.
Niggers call blacks "whitewash" soon as they on the scene.
Blacks stayed at home during the civil rights march. Niggers are the ones that marched.
...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."
gloss: A member of any typically dark-skinned people (now especially in combinations like prairie nigger or sand nigger).
pos: noun
tags: ethnic
offensive
slur
vulgar
examples: He never lost his appetite -
 He bigger grew and bigger;
 And proved, with every inch of height,
 A nigger is a nigger.
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.
"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."
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.
[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
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.
gloss: A friend, particularly a fellow black person (often as an informal term of address).
pos: noun
examples: “Snoop Dog!” one of them yelled. “That’s my nigga from Long Beach, man.”
I wonna say whassup to all my Niggers, you know, peace and one love.
I had overheard him greet a buddy who called him on the phone with "Yo, nigger, what's up?"
gloss: A person of any kind (particularly as a term of abuse).
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: 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.
gloss: A member of a group that is oppressed or marginalized in the manner of black people.
pos: noun
tags: especially
offensive
examples: 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.
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."
Woman is the nigger of the world / Yes, she is / If you don’t believe me, take a look at the one you’re with / Woman is the slave to the slaves
gloss: Any of various dark animals:
pos: noun
tags: offensive
gloss: Any of various dark animals:
pos: noun
tags: dated
offensive
examples: Nigger (Male) Orsotriaena medus moira Waterhouse and Lyell. 1914.
The Nigger is a common butterfly in Singapore and can be found in the company of bush browns.
gloss: Any of various dark animals:
pos: noun
tags: Cornwall
UK
archaic
offensive
gloss: Any of various dark animals:
pos: noun
tags: archaic
offensive
examples: To this group belongs the nigger, or black caterpillar of the turnip, which is often in sufficient numbers to do much mischief.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
examples: Now to locate the portion of the machine which contains the "nigger."
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
examples: 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 […]
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.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: US
archaic
examples: 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.
gloss: A black screen used in conjunction with the camera to block light or produce special lighting effects.
pos: noun
tags: dated
examples: 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.
gloss: To clear land by laying light pieces of round timber across the trunks of the trees and setting fire to them at the point of contact, by which means the trees are slowly burned through.
pos: verb
tags: dated
transitive
examples: […] he resorted to the practice of “niggering,” as it is called: which is simply laying light pieces of round timber across the trunks of the trees and setting fire to them at the point of contact; by which means the trees are slowly burned through.
The operation was this: they placed smaller logs and dry rubbish across the log and applied fire to them; this was called “niggering”.
All day long his axe rang through the frosty air as he felled saplings for the fence and stripped them from fuel for the “niggering” fires.
This means subduing and taming the forest itself—the central drama of The Fields—performing the hard labor of hacking the trees and “niggering” and burning the butts in order to get to the rich black soil underneath.
gloss: To exhaust (soil) by cropping it year by year without manure.
pos: verb
tags: dated
transitive
gloss: To perform in blackface.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
offensive
examples: There is a general agreement that niggering took over from mummering to keep up the old custom.
gloss: To behave as a stereotypical black person.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
offensive
examples: His father said, “Niggering, I was niggering about. You knew that surely.”
Forrest’s rediscovery of his father coincides with his discovery that old Robinson’s “niggering around” produced at least one child of mixed race.
I mean he was niggering. Niggering out, grabbing at my leg and microphone cord. I said, ‘Stop that you damn nigger!’ and that takes guts!
gloss: To treat as inferior.
pos: verb
tags: offensive
transitive
uncommon
examples: The gated community is a powerful tool in the systematic and sustained niggering of local 3rd-world communities - namely, in the book, the Hispanic (mostly wetbacK^([sic])) community[.]
> He is on TV saying that he was "abused" by the police and treated like a nigger.
Why would many Paletinians^([sic]) want to return to a land where they would be "niggered" for the benefit of the Israelis as the present Palestinian population is[?]
Synonyms: blackie
bootlip
brillo pad
coon
darkie
groid
jigaboo
jogger
jungle bunny
kaffir
moon cricket
nigga
nig-nog
porch monkey
Sambo
shitskin
smoked Irishman
spade
spearchucker
spook
tar baby
wog
Related words: negro
Negro
nigra
Nigra
whigga
whigger
wigga
wigger
Derived words: 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
nigger duck
niggerese
niggeresque
niggeress
niggerette
niggerfaggot
nigger fatigue
Nigger Felon League
niggerfied
nigger-fish
niggerfree
niggerfuck
nigger-fucker
niggerfucker
niggerfuxate
niggerfuxated
niggerfuxation
nigger gallery
niggergirl
niggergram
nigger grin
Nigger Head
nigger-head
niggerhead
nigger head
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
niggersow
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
Translations:
lang: Albanian
word: zezak
lang: Arabic
word: زِنْجِيّ
roman: zinjiyy
lang: Arabic
word: زَنْجِيّ
roman: zanjiyy
lang: Arabic
word: أَسْوَد
roman: ʔaswad
lang: Arabic
word: عَبْد
roman: ʕabd
lang: Armenian
word: նեգր
roman: negr
lang: Azerbaijani
word: zənci
lang: Baluchi
word: ٹیہہ
roman: ťíh
lang: Baluchi
word: ٹینگ
roman: ťeng
lang: Bulgarian
word: манга́л
roman: mangál
lang: Bulgarian
word: не́гър
roman: négǎr
lang: Chinese Cantonese
word: 黑鬼
roman: hak¹ gwai², haak¹ gwai²
lang: Chinese
word: 烏鬼 /乌鬼
roman: o͘-kúi
lang: Chinese
word: 烏張飛 /乌张飞
roman: o͘-tiuⁿ-hui
lang: Chinese Mandarin
word: 黑鬼
roman: hēiguǐ
lang: Chinese Mandarin
word: 尼哥
roman: nígē
lang: Czech
word: negr
lang: Danish
word: nigger
lang: Danish
word: abekat
lang: Dutch
word: nikker
lang: Dutch
word: neger
lang: Dutch
word: roetmop
lang: Esperanto
word: nigrulaĉo
lang: Esperanto
word: nigrulaĉino
lang: Estonian
word: neeger
lang: Estonian
word: pigi
lang: Finnish
word: neekeri
lang: Finnish
word: nekru
lang: Finnish
word: lakupekka
lang: Finnish
word: lakupetteri
lang: Finnish
word: laku
lang: French
word: nègre
lang: French
word: négresse
lang: French
word: négro
lang: French
word: bougnoule
lang: Georgian
word: ზანგი
roman: zangi
lang: German
word: Neger
lang: German
word: Negerin
lang: German
word: Nigger
lang: German
word: Niggerin
lang: German
word: Bimbo
lang: German
word: Kaffer
lang: German
word: Kafferin
lang: German
word: Mohr
lang: German
word: Mohrin
lang: Greek
word: αράπης
roman: arápis
lang: Greek
word: αραπίνα
roman: arapína
lang: Hawaiian
word: nika
lang: Hebrew
word: כושון
roman: kushon
lang: Hebrew
word: כּוּשִׁי
roman: kúshi
lang: Hindi
word: कालू
roman: kālū
lang: Hungarian
word: néger
lang: Hungarian
word: feka
lang: Icelandic
word: negri
lang: Ido
word: nigracho
lang: Italian
word: negro
lang: Italian
word: negra
lang: Japanese
word: 黒んぼ
roman: kuronbo
lang: Japanese
word: 黒奴
roman: kokudo
lang: Japanese
word: ニガー
roman: nigā
lang: Korean
word: 검둥이
roman: geomdung'i
lang: Korean
word: 깜둥이
roman: kkamdung'i
lang: Latvian
word: nēģeris
lang: Macedonian
word: црнец
roman: crnec
lang: Norwegian Bokmål
word: svarting
lang: Norwegian Bokmål
word: sotrør
lang: Norwegian Nynorsk
word: svarting
lang: Persian
word: سیاه سوخته
roman: siyâh suxte
lang: Persian
word: غلام سیاه
roman: ġolâm-siyâh
lang: Persian
word: کاکا سیاه
roman: kâkâ-siyâh
lang: Polish
word: czarnuch
lang: Polish
word: bambus
lang: Polish
word: asfalt
lang: Portuguese
word: preto
lang: Portuguese
word: macaco
lang: Portuguese
word: crioulo
lang: Romanian
word: negrotei
lang: Romanian
word: cioară
lang: Russian
word: негрито́с
roman: negritós
lang: Russian
word: негрито́ска
roman: negritóska
lang: Russian
word: чернома́зый
roman: černomázyj
lang: Russian
word: чернома́зая
roman: černomázaja
lang: Russian
word: ни́ггер
roman: nígger
lang: Russian
word: чёрный
roman: čórnyj
lang: Russian
word: черножо́пый
roman: černožópyj
lang: Slovak
word: neger
lang: Spanish
word: negro
lang: Spanish
word: negra
lang: Spanish
word: negrata
lang: Spanish
word: mayate
lang: Spanish
word: negrillo
lang: Spanish
word: negrilla
lang: Spanish
word: negrito
lang: Spanish
word: negrita
lang: Spanish
word: negrote
lang: Spanish
word: negraso
lang: Spanish
word: negro de mierda
lang: Spanish
word: mono
lang: Spanish
word: mona
lang: Spanish
word: gorila
lang: Swedish
word: neger
lang: Swedish
word: nigger
lang: Swedish
word: svarting
lang: Turkish
word: zenci
lang: Turkish
word: gündüz feneri
lang: Turkish
word: marsık
lang: Urdu
word: حبشی
roman: habśī
lang: Urdu
word: حبشن
roman: habśan
lang: Urdu
word: کالا
roman: kālā
lang: Urdu
word: کالی
roman: kālī
lang: Urdu
word: کالو
roman: kālū
lang: Urdu
word: کلو
roman: kallū
lang: Vietnamese
word: mọi đen
lang: Yiddish
word: שוואַרצער
roman: shvartser
lang: Yiddish
word: שוואַרצע
roman: shvartse