nigger

See also: Nigger and -nigger

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:

nigger

Alternative forms

Etymology

Alteration of earlier neger, 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).^[1]

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) enPR: nĭgʹər, IPA^(key): /ˈnɪɡə(ɹ)/
(General American) enPR: nĭgʹər, IPA^(key): /ˈnɪɡɚ/
Audio (Northern California): (file)
Rhymes: -ɪɡə(ɹ)

Noun

nigger (plural niggers)

(offensive, ethnic slur, vulgar, see usage notes) A black person; a person of black African descent.
Hypernyms: see Thesaurus:person of color
- 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:
  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.
- 1929, Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms‎^[4], New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, page 274:
  “Othello with his occupation gone,” she teased. “Othello was a nigger,” I said.
- 1970, “The Black Scholar interviews: Muhammad Ali.”, in The Black Scholar, spoken by Muhammad Ali:
  Brothers, you just don't know. If you knew where you were going now, if you knew your chances of coming out with no arm or no eye, fighting those people in their own land, fighting Asian brothers, you got to shoot them, they never lynched you, never called you nigger, never put dogs on you, never shot your leaders. You've got to shoot your "enemies" [...] and as soon as you get home you won't be able to find a job.
- 1981, Rick Perlstein, “Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy”, in The Nation‎^[5], spoken by Lee Atwater, archived from the original on 26 January 2025:
  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."
- 2004, Hotel Rwanda, spoken by Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte):
  You are not even a nigger, you are an African.
- 2014 March 5, Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Politics and the African-American Human Language”, in The Atlantic‎^[6], archived from the original on 12 March 2014:
  In a particularly sad portion of the Wells Report, Jonathan Martin laments being derided as a nigger to his face by Richie Incognito.
- 2015 July 23, The Editors, “Your Stories of Racism: An Earlier Era”, in The Atlantic‎^[7], archived from the original on 28 July 2015:
  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.
1. (offensive, ethnic slur, vulgar, slang) A person of black African descent who behaves badly or unconventionally (whether the speaker approves or disapproves).
  - 1996, Chris Rock: Bring the Pain‎^[8], Chris Rock (actor):
    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.
  - 2008, “The N Word”, in Greydon Square (music), The CPT Theorem:
    See, niggers are followers, blacks normally lead.
    Niggers call blacks "whitewash" soon as they on the scene.
  - 2010 April 13, Kitty Kelley, quoting an unnamed town resident, Oprah: A Biography, New York, N.Y.: Crown, →ISBN, →OL, page 193:
    Blacks stayed at home during the civil rights march. Niggers are the ones that marched.
  - 2021, Dave Chapelle, The Closer:
    ...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."
(offensive, ethnic slur, vulgar, see usage notes) A member of any typically dark-skinned people (now especially in combinations like prairie nigger or sand nigger).
- 1880 June 19, Henry Kendall, “My Piccaninny”, in The Australian Town and Country Journal, page 28, column 4:
  He never lost his appetite -
  He bigger grew and bigger;
  And proved, with every inch of height,
  A nigger is a nigger.
- 1902, George Stoddart Whitmore, The Last Maori War in New Zealand..., page vi:
  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.
- 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
  "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."
- 1932, Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase:
  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.
- 1985, Cormac McCarthy, “Chapter 10”, in blood Meridian, Random House, →ISBN, →OCLC:
  [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
  [This quote is spoken by a scalphunter in c. 1850.]
- 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^[9], Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, published 1989, →OCLC, page 197:
  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.
(African-American Vernacular) A friend, particularly a fellow black person (often as an informal term of address).
- 1997, McKinley Lee, Chosen by Fate: My Life inside Death Row Records, →ISBN:
  “Snoop Dog!” one of them yelled. “That’s my nigga from Long Beach, man.”
- 2001 Autumn-Winter, Awad Ibrahim, quoting ‘Sam’, “Hey, whadap homeboy?”, in Taboo‎^[10], page 94:
  I wonna say whassup to all my Niggers, you know, peace and one love.
- 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:
  I had overheard him greet a buddy who called him on the phone with "Yo, nigger, what's up?"
(figurative, especially African-American Vernacular, otherwise offensive) A person of any kind (particularly as a term of abuse).
- 2021, Dave Chapelle, The Closer:
  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.
(especially in comparisons, now offensive) A member of a group that is oppressed or marginalized in the manner of black people.
- 1979 April 14, Jil Clark, Mel King, King Axes Women's Commission, page 1:
  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.
- 1972, Ron Dellums, Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, →ISBN, page 58:
  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."
- 1972, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, “Woman Is the Nigger of the World”, in Some Time in New York City‎^[11]:
  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
(now offensive) Any of various dark animals:
1. (now offensive) Any member of species Girella tricuspidata (luderick).
2. (now offensive, dated) A dark brown nymphalid butterfly, Orsotriaena medus, of south Asia, southeast Asia, and Australia.
  - 1932, Gustavus Athol Waterhouse, What Butterfly is That?: A Guide to the Butterflies of Australia, page 112:
    Nigger (Male) Orsotriaena medus moira Waterhouse and Lyell. 1914.
  - 2010, Khew Sin Khoon, A Field Guide to the Butterflies of Singapore, page 69:
    The Nigger is a common butterfly in Singapore and can be found in the company of bush browns.
3. (UK, Cornwall, fishing, archaic) A kind of sea cucumber, Holothuria forskali, the cotton-spinner.
4. (archaic) The larva of the turnip sawfly, an agricultural pest.
  - 1873, Nature, volume 7, page 448:
    To this group belongs the nigger, or black caterpillar of the turnip, which is often in sufficient numbers to do much mischief.
(archaic, electricity) 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.
- 1892, Western Electrician, volume 11, page 72:
  Now to locate the portion of the machine which contains the "nigger."
(archaic) 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.
- 1918, Leonard L. Shertzer, How to Build and Operate a Sawmill, page 20:
  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 […]
- [1919, Laura Fletcher Hodges, Early Indianapolis, page 16:
  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.]
(archaic, US) 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.
- 1983, Goldenseal, volume 9, page 20:
  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.
(film, dated) A black screen used in conjunction with the camera to block light or produce special lighting effects.
- 1961, Peter Snow, Electronic Flashlight Photography, page 114:
  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.

Usage notes

The word nigger is considered to be extremely offensive and one of the most taboo words in the English language. In a study by Kristy Beers Fägersten in 2007, undergraduates at the University of Florida were asked to rate twelve pejorative English words on a scale of 1 ('Not Offensive') to 10 ('Very Offensive'). Participants rated nigger the most offensive, n

[1]