... woodpile

[Derrick Chapman]

I've only heard the expression used twice in my 45 years.  Once by an old
redneck racist white woman school teacher in the 1960s.  Once by a white
British woman living in Florida in the early 1990s.  The Brit lady had black
boyfriends and an adopted black daughter.  I don't know if her use of the
phrase came via the boyfriends, but when she used it in my presence (I'm
white), I was appalled.  I blanched.  The phrase was something beyond the
pale of acceptability in my opinion.  I don't know if the Brit lady was
attempting to "speak Southern" to me, assuming (wrongly) that I wouldn't be
offended.

I've also heard that there is a German idiomatic cognate or antecedent, but
I can't document that.

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Douglas G. Wilson
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 8:50 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: ... woodpile


At 09:15 AM 9/21/00 -0500, you wrote:
>A Murie wrote:
> > "Nigger in the woodpile" always meant some hidden nefarious thing, not
>necessarily identified or even known.
>
>I have *never* heard the phrase used in this way.  It has always meant a
>hidden element in the bloodline that makes the person have dark skin, hair,
>eyes, etc., specifically if the rest of the family is very fair.  A similar
>expression is "he/she belongs to the milkman," when the person being
>described doesn't look like anyone else in the family.

I have only heard the expression rarely in either sense (it's considered
taboo or impolite by many). Usually it has meant "catch" or "unexpected
problem" ("hidden nefarious thing"). On the few occasions when I
encountered the "black ancestor" sense, I assumed a simple error versus
deliberate metaphor or joke. But the "Random House Historical Dictionary of
American Slang" shows both senses.

RHHDAS shows the sense of (1) "hidden nefarious thing" from 1843, the sense
of (2) "black ancestor" from 1953.

It is my belief that the use of the expression in the first sense was
virtually obsolete in many circles by the time of the origin of the second
sense. Thus (I think) many people around 1950 still recognized the
expression but no longer remembered what it meant, and therefore applied it
to something different.

-- Doug Wilson