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

[MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US)]

I though you meant that you suspected that the 1929 cite was a one-off, and that the expression didn't get legs until much later (which I don't think is the case -- it came into being not long before 1928, and has been used continuously since then).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joel Berson [mailto:berson at att.net]
> Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2016 12:38 PM
> To: MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at mail.mil>
> Subject: Re: The NY Times prints "nigger" ...
> 
> 
> I meant only that the OED has a long gap.  Its entry "has not been fully updated."
> 
> 
> 
> From: "MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US)" <william.d.mullins18.civ at mail.mil>
> To: Joel Berson <berson at att.net>
> Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2016 10:51 AM
> Subject: RE: The NY Times prints "nigger" ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [Caution-mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU < Caution-mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU > ] On Behalf
> Of Joel Berson
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 4:16 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU < mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU >
> > Subject: The NY Times prints "nigger" ...
> >
> >
> > (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.)
> 
> 
> It isn't difficult to find many citations of "wetback" between 1929 and 1972, including those associated with "Operation Wetback" of the
> 1950s (a program to repatriate illegal aliens from Mexico back to that country).
> 
> 


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