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The Etymology of the Word "Nigger"

6 Pages 1430 Words May 2015

While reading the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the term “nigger” is prevelant. The word first appears in chapter two when Huck says, “Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door” (Twain 7). After that the term keeps reappearing all throughout the novel. As the novel unravels, it becomes apparent that Mark Twain is not using the term in an offensive manner. The term “nigger” has been around since at least 1619. The denotation of the term is a black person or a member of the dark-skinned race as in Webster’s Dictionary. Sometime during the 1800s the connotation of the term turned into something rather offensive.
The term “nigger” is an alteration of the earlier term neger, from Middle French negre, from Spanish or Portuguese negro, from negro black and from Latin niger. The first known use of the term in the U.S. was in 1619 when John Rolfe, a British colonist, wrote a diary entry using the term to describe a boatful of newly arrived African slaves. The way Rolfe spelled “nigger”, “negar” was due to the “general lack of uniform literacy standards in the 17th century” (“The N-Word”). During this time, “nigger” solely meant a black person and was only used as a name for black people. As more time passed, the meaning developed into something else entirely.
“Nigger” is closely associated with slavery and the mistreatment of African Americans. Slaves date back to a very long time ago. In the Slavery throughout History: Almanac, on page 2-3, the almanac says, “Historians believe it [slavery] happened around 10,000 years ago.” Slaves in that time were prisoners of war tamed like wild beasts. Then in 3500 B.C.E., a new form of slavery called debt slavery was used and often led to lifelong imprisonment (Sylvester 2-3). After that, the slave trade came along and humans were being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean producing an extreme amount of profit in the 1...

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