英语词汇nigger的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

nigger; N-word. When used by a white person to describe a black or African-American person, this is probably the most offensive, hateful, hurtful term in the language today. Like Ne- gro, the word derives ultimately from the Latin niger, black. It is not an Americanism, the first recorded use of nigger being in a 1786 poem by Robert Burns, although variations on it, includ- ing negar, neger, and niger, are recorded two centuries before then. Though African Americans do commonly use the word in different ways among themselves (“That nigger’s got luck you wouldn’t believe”), blacks rarely if ever do so in the pres- ence of whites. Since the O. J. Simpson murder trial in 1995, when evidence of its use by a detective-witness was introduced, it often has been euphemistically called the N-word. Nigger has also been an offensive derogatory term applied to Indians as well as blacks up until recent times. In fact, the objectionable word was applied to themselves by white mountain men in the early West. Once commonly used expressions such as a nigger in the woodpile (concealed but important information, a “catch” in a situation) are rarely heard today. So sensitive are people black and white to the use of nigger that the word niggardly (miserly), which sounds like but is no relation to it etymologi- cally, is often avoided. There is no character named “Nigger Jim” in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as is so often said. The runaway slave in Twain’s novel is named Jim, just Jim; nowhere in the book is his name anything else. For an in-depth study of the abominable n-word see African-American scholar Randall Kennedy’s Nigger (2002).

词汇	nigger
词源	nigger; N-word. When used by a white person to describe a black or African-American person, this is probably the most offensive, hateful, hurtful term in the language today. Like Ne- gro, the word derives ultimately from the Latin niger, black. It is not an Americanism, the first recorded use of nigger being in a 1786 poem by Robert Burns, although variations on it, includ- ing negar, neger, and niger, are recorded two centuries before then. Though African Americans do commonly use the word in different ways among themselves (“That nigger’s got luck you wouldn’t believe”), blacks rarely if ever do so in the pres- ence of whites. Since the O. J. Simpson murder trial in 1995, when evidence of its use by a detective-witness was introduced, it often has been euphemistically called the N-word. Nigger has also been an offensive derogatory term applied to Indians as well as blacks up until recent times. In fact, the objectionable word was applied to themselves by white mountain men in the early West. Once commonly used expressions such as a nigger in the woodpile (concealed but important information, a “catch” in a situation) are rarely heard today. So sensitive are people black and white to the use of nigger that the word niggardly (miserly), which sounds like but is no relation to it etymologi- cally, is often avoided. There is no character named “Nigger Jim” in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as is so often said. The runaway slave in Twain’s novel is named Jim, just Jim; nowhere in the book is his name anything else. For an in-depth study of the abominable n-word see African-American scholar Randall Kennedy’s Nigger (2002).
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