Jap

[Mullins, Bill]

>
> OK, we're talking about the OED's #1 here. #2 is derived from
> it, and #3 is entirely unrelated. Bill was talking about the
> citations for #1. I had never heard of #2 or #3, or of any
> other meaning, so I took his implied meaning as "the word
> means 'Japanese', and I'm talking about citations for its
> pejorative use." I was wrong.
>
>
> 1. Jap, n.
>     Colloquial abbreviation of JAPANESE. Also as adj.; spec.
> Jap silk = HABUTAI.
>   As n. and adj. the word Jap has strong derogatory
> connotations and is now falling into disuse.
>

Don't take too much blame, Mark.  I was sloppy, at best, in my
definition for Jap, giving a definition as the word is currently used,
when my cites were ~140 years ago, and the word's usage was different.
I should have either quoted the OED directly, or referred to the
numbered sense I was antedating.  I agree that the cite contained no
explicit slur, in the sentences I quoted.  But each article, taken as a
whole, contained great amounts of slurrage. (and look THAT up in your
Funk'n Wagnall's  . . . .)

> But Bill gave the citations as examples of the word *used as a slur*,

That was not my intention, but it certainly was the effect.  My
intention was merely to antedate the OED for the sense that is currently
perceived and often used as a slur, but which was not necessarily used
as a slur in 1860.


Another sense, which doesn't jump out of the OED definitions, is in the
phrase "Jap slap".  Probably the closest modern analog would be bitch
slap, but I always thought of Pearl Harbor with Jap slap, and felt like
it contained an element of surprise (an open-handed sucker punch,
perhaps).  This may be the same as sense #2 in the OED (a verb), but I
always knew Jap Slap as a stand-alone phrase, where "Jap" is an
adjective, and had never heard "to Jap" as it is defined in the OED.  I
need to remember to look it up in HDAS when I get home tonight.