[Ads-l] The NY Times prints "nigger" ...

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Thu Sep 15 11:56:05 UTC 2016


An earlier Italian "wop":

1910 _Everybody's Mag._  (Jan.) 99: Oh, army of invading wops and kikes
whose moveable feasts and perennial fasts last the whole year round!

Surely newspapers would reveal some earlier exx.

I'm starting to think that the obs. non-ethnic "wop" is an extension rather
than a precursor.

JL

JL

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 8:39 PM, Robin Hamilton <
robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:

> As a possibly-related question, why does Edgar Wallace, in the Sanders
> stories,
> give his kikes Scottish surnames?
>
> ... ah, I guess that's an easy one.  Which two ethnic (scan as either
> geographical or religious) groups get tagged as mean (in the sense of
> stingy,
> not the other sense referring to out-and-out mental hardmen)?
>
>                    Robin don't-call-me-McGregor-[Campbell] Hamilton
>
> [That particular can of worms was opened at the point where the Massacre at
> Glencoe intersected with an interesting if possibly necessary Scottish
> law, an
> early example of Profiling, whereby it was decreed that if four or more
> McGregors were found together under the one roof at nightfall, they were
> all to
> be hangit.  Thegither.  And no jooking of the gibbet allowed.]
>
> RH.
>
> >
> >     On 15 September 2016 at 01:20 Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > wrote:
> >
> >
> >     > On Sep 14, 2016, at 7:29 PM, Jonathan Lighter <
> wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> >     > wrote:
> >     >
> >     > 1. A stupid or worthless person. Obs.
> >     >
> >     > 1908 Kenneth McGaffey _The Sorrows of a Show Girl_ (Chicago: J. I.
> >     > Austen)
> >     > 17: Some old pappy guy out in Chi.... I don't know who or what
> this old
> >     > wop is that made this crack.
> >     >
> >     > 2. An Italian.
> >     >
> >     > 1912 Rex Beach _The Net_ (N.Y.: Harper) 154: Do you see that...wop
> next
> >     > to
> >     > Cesar Maruffi?
> >     >
> >     > 1913 _Saturday Eve. Post_ (March 25) 10: He had eaten...a banana
> >     > snatched
> >     > from the stand of a somnolent "wop."
> >     >
> >     > [Etc.]
> >     >
> >     > (Also, any person of Southern or Central European descent; the
> Italian
> >     > language.)
> >     >
> >
> >
> >     Not to be confused with wogs, reputed to start at Calais. Perhaps
> that's
> > now official doctrine, given Brexit.
> >
> >     LH
> >
> >
> >     > On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 5:16 PM, Joel Berson <berson at att.net>
> wrote:
> >     >
> >     >> and "wetback" and "chink" also. Today, in "A [Racially ] Charged
> Title.
> >     >> A
> >     >> Canceled Show. Now a Cal State Official Resigns." [Bracketed
> "Racially"
> >     >> on
> >     >> paper, but not in electrons.] By Andrew R. Chow. Page C5/1 in New
> >     >> England
> >     >> edition.
> >     >>
> >     >> "Michele Roberge, the director of the Carpenter Performing Arts
> Center
> >     >> at
> >     >> California State University, Long Beach, resigned last week after
> the
> >     >> university told her to cancel a campus performance of a racially
> >     >> charged
> >     >> show."
> >     >>
> >     >> "The play, “N*W*C,” whose full title is three racial slurs, stars
> three
> >     >> actors of African-American, Asian and Latino descent [not in that
> >     >> order!]
> >     >> as they reflect on their conflicted experience with race in
> America.
> >     >> The
> >     >> slurs are used in an attempt to deflate them, according to a 2007
> New
> >     >> York
> >     >> Times interview with the show’s creators. The performance was
> scheduled
> >     >> for
> >     >> Sept. 29."...
> >     >>
> >     >> "The play, written by Allan Axibal, Rafael Agustín and Miles
> Gregley,
> >     >> had
> >     >> its debut in 2007. The three authors have been performing it
> steadily
> >     >> on
> >     >> campuses across the country, including a sold-out performance on
> the
> >     >> Long
> >     >> Beach campus last year. While the title of the show (the initials
> stand
> >     >> for
> >     >> 'nigger,' 'wetback' and 'chink') was initially criticized by the
> Long
> >     >> Beach
> >     >> branch of the N.A.A.C.P., Ms. Roberge said there were no live
> protests
> >     >> before or after the performance."
> >     >>
> >     >> (A more racially-offensive W than "wetback" would have been "wop,"
> >     >> although I suppose that might have required dating the play 100
> years
> >     >> earlier. As a side note, however, the OED dates "wop" to 1919 and
> >     >> "wetback" to only 10 years later -- the latter perhaps an outlier,
> >     >> since
> >     >> the next quotation is 1972.)
> >     >>
> >     >> Joel
> >     >>
> >     >>
> >     >>
> >     >>
> >     >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >     >> The American Dialect Society -
> >     >> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.
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> >     >>
> >     >
> >     >
> >     >
> >     > --
> >     > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> >     > truth."
> >     >
> >     > ------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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