[Ads-l] Antedating of "Wigger"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Scans of the 1987 cloth edition are available via the Internet
Archive. There are also scans of the 1989 paperback edition in the
Internet Archive. Both editions show the target word.

Year: 1987 Cloth Edition (1987 Copyright)
Book Title: No Kidding: Inside the World of Teenage Girls
Author: Myrna Kostash
Chapter Fourteen: Nicole
Quote Page 166
Publisher: A Douglas Gibson Book: McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, Canada
Database: Internet Archive (Scan from copy at The Library, University of Guelph)

[Begin expurgated excerpt; original text is unexpurgated]
She grew up in Regent Park in public housing and has never gone very
far away, even while living with her sister and her four-year-old
niece. Of her father's life these last few years she has little idea,
she does not spend much time with her mother, her friends are Blacks.
At school they call her "wigger", for "white ni____". She does not
seem to mind. She and her friends are "boogiers", which, I get the
impression, is the only way to be when you're seventeen, hating
school, loving reggae music and dance movies and old musicals on TV,
hating everything that is depressing, such as newspapers, the news,
and politics.
[End expurgated excerpt]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 12:16 PM Shapiro, Fred
<00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> wigger (OED 1988)
>
> I have not verified this in the print book or in non-snippet online, but a Google Books snippet seems to indicate that "wigger" appears in Myrna Kostash's book No Kidding: Inside the World of Teenage Girls (1987), page 166.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org