Nigger in the Woodpile

[emckean at ENTERACT.COM]

My mother, who is olive-skinned in a family of very fair people, uses this
phrase to describe herself. "There must have been a . . ." I can make her
say it in front of a witness if you really need me to. :-)

If you remember from other ADS threads, she also uses the phrases "Bob's
yer uncle" and "treated like a red-headed stepchild."

I blame too much reading, as she spent much of her childhood in places
like Burma, Thailand, and Argentina.

Erin McKean
editor at verbatimmag.com

On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Fred Shapiro wrote:

> Another list serv is having a thread about the expression "nigger in the
> woodpile."  One participant is arguing stridently that one of the meanings
> of this phrase, an unacknowledged black forebear of a white child, is used
> only by blacks and is not used by whites.  DARE and the Random House
> Historical Dictionary of American Slang do not indicate such a restriction
> of usage.  Can anyone on this list shed any light on the question?
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
> Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
>   and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
> Yale Law School                             forthcoming
> e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>