green room

The green room at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2007, a room with comfortable chairs, couches, and a television that is predominantly red and yellow in color

16 November 2020

A green room is a place for performers to wait and relax until they are needed on stage. Why it is called green is not known, although there are many guesses. The issue is complicated because in some of the early uses of the phrase we don’t know exactly what they are referring to.

One of the first references to a green room is in Samuel Pepys Diary of 7 October 1666, although the context at first blush does not seem theatrical. Pepys writes that he was called to the Palace of Whitehall that day to meet with the king to discuss the naval budget:

And anon we were called in to the green-room, where the King, Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, Duke of Albemarle, G. Carteret, W. Coventry, Morrice.

Part of the Whitehall Palace complex was the Cockpit-in-Court, so named because cockfighting was held there. But it was also used as a theater and for wide assortment of functions, including as a residence for courtiers. After the Restoration of the monarchy and the legal appearance of women on stage, a dressing room for female actors, decorated in green baize, was constructed there in 1662. Pepys may have been referring to a meeting in this room, or perhaps it was to another room elsewhere in the palace. We do not know.

In his 1676 play The Virtuoso, Thomas Shadwell references a green room:

Your Marriage-Bawd, your Canonical-Bawd is worst of all; they betray people for their lives-time. Here, carry her, and lock her up in the green-room; I'll maul your Bawdship.

Again, while the term appears in a play, the context is not theatrical, so again we don’t know exactly what green room means here. But a few years later, in his 1679 play A True Widow, Shadwell makes the first clear reference to an actor’s waiting room by that name. The scene is set in a theater:

Lady Busy.     Fie, Mr. Stanmore, that you should say such an ungentile thing! Come, Miss, bear up, and do not cry: how can you endure to see a young Lady's tears, and not melt: Come on; pretty Miss, I am sure you will be kind, and constant to Mr. Stanmore, will you not?

Gartrude.     Yes, yes.

Lady Busy.     Good. Why look you, Sir, I know you are a worthy Gentleman, and will consider of a Settlement, such as befits a Gentlewoman.

Stanmore.     No, Madam: Selfish, this Evening, in a green Room, behind the Scenes, was before-hand with me; she ne'r tells of that: Can I love one that prostitutes her self to that Fellow?

The OED brackets this citation, indicating the editors did not think this clearly referred to a actor’s waiting area, but to my mind it at least clearly refers to some space behind a theatrical stage.

The 1692 divorce proceedings between Henry Howard, the 7th Duke of Norfolk and Mary Mordaunt give us another early instance of the word, again a non-theatrical one. The context of this particular use is quite juicy. Howard was suing his wife for divorce on the grounds that she had slept with Sir John Germain. The testimony of one of the servants, a Thomas Hudson, includes references to Nell Gwyn, actress, prostitute, and mistress to Charles II:

Thomas Hudson saith, That the Duke of Norfolk being at Portsmouth, he was Butler at Windsor, when Germaine, and the Dutchess, and Cornwall went to play; Germaine sent his Footman for clean Linen, which he brought the next Morning; Mrs. Gwin said to the Dutchess, The Dog would have lain with me, but she would not lay the Dog where the Deer laid, for she knew my Lady Dutchess would accept of him; after that he saw a Shirt and a Wascoat in the Closet, which my Ladies Woman and Ann Burton took away. My Lord being absent, we murmured amongst our selves, that my Lord was wrong'd; I told my Lord, whereupon my Master Cragg had me to my Lord Peterborough's Lodging, and threaten'd me, that he would prefer me to his Brother Richards, who turn'd me off in Germany. This was, he thinks, in December or September 1685: Mrs. Gwin spoke this in the Green Room, and he was in a Closet hard by, and the Door open, and so heard it.

The incident in question happened at Windsor, and we don’t know what the green room referred to was. Howard was not granted the divorce in 1692, in large part because his fellow lords found him as guilty of infidelity as she, but the couple eventually divorced in 1700. Mordaunt eventually married Germain.

The term appears again in 1694 in the anonymous play The Adventures of the Helvetian Hero:

The Young Couple's Apartments were fixt, and their Bedchamber assign'd them in that Green Room once her Maiden-Castle or Imprisonment, now the Nuptial Bed-room, abounding with all the Freedom and Delights that Matrimony and the Marriage bed could afford.

The next clear reference to a theatrical waiting area is in Colley Cibber’s 1701 Love Makes a Man:

Yes, Sir, I do know London pretty well, and the Side-box, Sir, and behind the Scenes, ay, and the Green Room too, and all the Girls, and Women-Actresses there.

And we get another in Henry Fielding’s 1736 play Pasquin, which gives us some insight into the hierarchical nature of the London theater of that day:

1st Player.     Sir, the Prompter, and most of the Players, are drinking Tea in the Green-Room.

Trapwit.     Mr. Fustian, shall we go drink a Dish of Tea with them? Come, Sir, as you have a Part in my Play, you shall drink a Dish with us.

1st Player.      Sir, I dare no go into the Green-Room; my Salary is not high enough: I shall be forfeited if I go in there.

After this date, we have many clear references to green room as a theatrical waiting area.

So why the green? We don’t know, but there are two commonly touted explanations that we can dismiss. The first is that actors’ waiting rooms are painted green because the color is psychologically soothing. This explanation relies on twentieth-century psychological theory which would not exist in the seventeenth century. The other clearly false explanation is that the room is called green because actors would be paid there. Besides having no evidence that such rooms were used to conduct financial business, the association of the color green with money comes from U.S. currency being that color. English banknotes are not green as a rule. Besides, back in the day actors would more likely have been paid in coin, not notes.

Perhaps it is named for the female actor’s dressing room in Whitehall Palace. Or maybe to another such room so decorated. The early non-theatrical uses of the term seem to indicate that green room may have had an early sense meaning a woman’s dressing room or boudoir, and over time that extended in theatrical use to include male actors. We’ll probably never know for sure.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

The Adventures of the Helvetian Hero. London: Randall Taylor, 1694, 137–38. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Cibber, Colley. Love Makes a Man. London: Richard Parker, 1701, 44. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Fielding, Henry. Pasquin. London: J. Watts, 1736, 12–13. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

———. Pasquin. O.M. Brack, William Kupersmith, and Curt A. Zimansky, eds. Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 1973, 54. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2011, s.v. green room, n.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 7 of 10. William Matthews and Robert Latham, eds. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1972, 312. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Shadwell, Thomas. A True Widow. London: Benjamin Tooke, 1679, 61–62. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

———. The Virtuoso. London: T.N. for Henry Herringman, 1676, 62. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

A True Account of The Proceedings Before the House of Lords; (From Jan. 7. 1691. To Feb. 17. Following) Between the Duke and Dutchess of Norfolk. 26. London: 1692, Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Photo credit: Edinburgh Blog, 29 September 2007, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

graveyard shift

Three child coal miners with mules, Gary, West Virginia, 1908

13 November 2020

A graveyard shift is a late-night work schedule, often starting at midnight and continuing on until morning. Why it is called graveyard is not known for certain, but it’s likely because it is late, dark, and quiet, with few other people around.

The phrase first appears in the context of mining, with that industry being one of the first to operate twenty-four hours a day. Prior to electrification, night-time shifts in most industries were often unprofitable because of the costs of lighting, but that was irrelevant for mining, which required lighting regardless of the time of day.

The phrase is recorded as early as 9 August 1884, when it appears in The Mining Record in reference to an Arizona mine:

Have resumed work. On Monday afternoon superintendent Hammond received a telegram directing him to resume operations in the mine, and at 6 P.M. the graveyard shift went below, while the whistle sounded loud and long, confirming the good news.

And a definition of graveyard shift appears in Colorado court records from 1894:

Several shifts were at work, and, at the date named, William Sharp and his companions were employed on what is well termed among miners “the graveyard shift," from midnight on to the morning.

As electrification progressed and it became profitable to work at night, the practice and term moved into other industries.

The term swing shift, however, seems to have arisen in another industry and under different circumstances. Today, the term usually applies to the shift between the day and graveyard shifts, but originally it referred to an irregular shift, an unusually long one of eighteen hours or more. And swing shift is first recorded in the context of railroad workers, although it may also have gotten its start in coal mining, as uses in that industry are recorded shortly afterwards.

The earliest examples of swing shift that I have found are from a protracted strike at the Scranton Traction Company, which operated streetcars in that Pennsylvania city at the turn of the twentieth century. From the Elmira Gazette (New York) of 24 June 1899 under the optimistic headline “Strike May Be Settled To-Day”:

The men complain of the system of work known as the “swing shift,” preferring to work a straight shift of nine and ten hours.

The headline was optimistic because a year and a half later, on 28 December 1900, the same paper reported under the headline “Strike Settled”:

The men formerly worked on what is known as the swing shift system, and were frequently required to work eighteen hours for $1.80. Under that system there were three crews to each two cars. Under the new plan there will be two crews for each car. Each crew will work but nine hours a day.

There’s a reference swing shifts relating to coal miner strikes that occurred in 1900–01 over the issue of swing shifts in a 1905 study of colliery labor organization by Frank Warne:

Firemen refused to work in a number of collieries in which officials attempted to introduce the “swing” shift.

And in 1902 the swing shift is again the subject of a strike, this time by coal miners employed by the Lackawanna Steel Company of Scranton. As reported by the New York Times on 13 March 1902:

At the Woodward colliery to-day the refusal of Superintendent Phillips to reinstate the discharged firemen or to change the swing shift order was reported by the committee to the 950 men. His proposition to give the discharged men other work and allow the shift to be made in the middle of the week was refused.

And a 1902 commission reviewing the Lackawanna strike provides more detail in its reporting:

He was one of a committee of Delaware, Lackawanna and Western engineers who on February 12, last, requested District Superintendent Williams in writing that the swing shift be not abolished, but that the twenty-four-hour Sunday shift be continued.

Uses of swing shift in the current sense of a work shift between the day and night shift are in place by the 1940s.

There’s an old bit of internet lore that would have the origin of graveyard shift being in an early modern practice of posting a vigil at cemeteries to listen for the sounds of people who had been mistakenly buried alive. This, obviously, is utter nonsense.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

“12.000 Miners May Strike.” New York Times, 13 March 1902, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Bissell, P.J. “Mollie Gibson Consolidated Mining and Milling Company v. Sharp” (1894). In T.M. Robinson, Reports of the Decisions of the Court of Appeals of the State of Colorado, vol. 5 of 20. New York: Banks and Brothers, 1896. 323. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. graveyard shift, n.

“Mining Notes.” The Mining Record, 9 August 1884, 86. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. graveyard, n.

“Strike May Be Settled To-Day.” Elmira Gazette (New York), 24 June 1899, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“Strike Settled.” Elmira Gazette (New York), 28 December 1900, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Warne, Frank Julian. The Coal-Mine Workers: A Study in Labor Organization. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1905, 144. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wright, Carroll D. “Proceedings of Friday, Dec. 5 [1902].” Proceedings of the Anthracite Mine Strike Commission. Scranton: Scranton Tribune, 1902–03. 69. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Lewis Wickes Hine, 1908, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Records of the National Child Labor Committee.

Gotham

Image of the Bat Signal over Gotham City from the Batman comics

12 November 2020

Most of us are probably familiar with Gotham as the name of the city in which Batman prowls the streets at night. It’s an old nickname for New York City, and in the comic the fictional Gotham City stands in for the real place. But the name Gotham is older than New York.

Gotham got its start as the name of a village in Nottinghamshire, England, and in the fifteenth century the townspeople of that hamlet developed a reputation for being fools and simpletons; the village became the butt of jokes. We see this sense in the First Shepherd’s Play of the Towneley cycle of plays that is preserved in the manuscript San Marino, Huntingdon Library MS HM 1, which was copied c. 1500:

Now God gyf you care,
Foles all sam!
Sagh I neuer none so fare
Bot the foles of Gotham.

(Now God give you sorrow,
You two fools!
I never saw any behave so
Except the fools of Gotham.)

The name stood as the butt of jokes for several centuries. But around the turn of the nineteenth century, Gotham started to be used as a nickname for Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in an unironic sense. It may be that the application to that city started as a jocular term, indicating the inhabitants were none too smart, but the earliest clear references to Newcastle as Gotham are quite serious and not at all derogatory. Here is a passage from the poem Kiver Awa’ from November 1804:

Heav’n prosper thee, Gotham! thou famous old town,
     Of the Tyne the chief glory and pride;
May thy heroes acquire immortal renown,
     In the dread field of Mars, when they’re try’d.

And a bit later, in 1825, it’s glossed in dictionary of terms from the North of England:

GOTHAM, a cant name for Newcastle

But about the same time on the other side of the Atlantic, Gotham also starts to be applied to New York City. Washington Irving uses it as a nickname for that city, and Irving is definitely using it the mocking sense, making fun of its citizenry. Here is a sample from his Salmagundi of 27 June 1807:

Straddle was equally successful with the Giblets, as may well be supposed; for though pedestrian merit may strive in vain to become fashionable in Gotham; yet a candidate in an equipage is always recognized, and like Philip's ass, laden with gold, will gain admittance every where. Mounted in his curricle or his gig, the candidate is like a statue elevated on a high pedestal, his merits are discernable from afar, and strike the dullest opticks.——Oh! Gotham, Gotham! most enlightened of cities!—how does my heart swell with delight, when I behold your sapient inhabitants lavishing their atten- tion with such wonderful discernment!

Batman makes his appearance in Detective Comics #27, May 1939, but Gotham City is not named as his place of residence until Batman #4, December 1940.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Bell, John, ed. Rhymes of the Northern Bards. Newcastle: M. Angus and Son, 1812, 15. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Brockett, John Trotter. A Glossary of North Country Words. Newcastle: T. and J. Hodgson for E. Charney, 1825, 84. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“First Shepherds’ Play.” The Towneley Plays, vol. 1 of 2. Martin Stevens and Arthur C. Cawley, eds. Early English Text Society, SS 13. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994, lines 257–60, 113. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Irving, Washington (as Launcelot Langstaff). Salmagundi, no. 12, 27 June 1807, 235. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Gotham, n.

Image credit: Mitch Gerads, Batman, 3.14, March 2017, DC Comics. Fair use of a low-resolution copy to illustrate the topic under discussion.

gossip

11 November 2020

Gossip, as we all know, is rumor and unsubstantiated news of a titillating or sensational nature. But surprisingly, its origin is in the Christian rite of baptism.

The word dates back to the Old English word godsibb, meaning a godparent or sponsor at a baptism. It’s a compound of god (n., deity) + sibb (adj., marking a kinship, relationship). The sibb is the same root as in sibling.

The word appears in Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (Sermon of the Wolf to the English). Wulfstan, who often styled himself as “the Wolf” in his writing, was the archbishop of York. He wrote the sermon c.1015 C.E., and it is an apocalyptic sermon blaming the predations of the Vikings on the sins of the English people. In the version of the sermon found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 419, Wulfstan writes:

And godsibbas & godbearn to fela man forspilde wide geond þas ðeode.

(And too many gossips & godchildren have been destroyed widely throughout this nation.)

The word eventually expanded in meaning to refer to a close friend of either sex, the type of person one might choose to be a godparent to one’s children. This sense appears in the beast fable The Fox and the Wolf found in Oxford, Bodleian MS Digby 86, which was copied c.1275. In this passage, the fox is acting the role of confessor to the wolf:

“Gossip,” quod þe wolf, “forȝef hit me,
Ich habbe ofte sehid qued bi þe.
Men seide þat þou on þine live
Misferdest mid mine wive:
Ich þe aperseivede one stounde,
And in bedde togedere ou founde.
Ich wes ofte ou ful ney,
And in bedde togedere ou sey.
Ich wende, also oþre doþ,
Þat Ihc iseie were soþ,
And þerfore þou were me loþ.
Gode gossip, ne be þou nohut wroþ.”

(“Gossip,” said the wolf, “forgive me,”
I have often said evil things about you.
Men said that that you on your life
You sinned with my wife:
I then perceived one occasion,
And found you together in bed.
I was often very near you,
And saw you together in bed,
I believed, as other do,
That what I saw was true,
And therefore you were loathsome to me.
Good gossip, don’t be angry.)

And eventually the sense shifted to refer to a person who engages in idle talk, that is a friend with whom one shares confidences. This sense appears in Thomas Drant’s translation of Horace’s satires. He opens the fable of country mouse and city mouse thusly:

Full gosseplike, the father sage,
beginnes his fable then

Drant uses the word to refer to a man, but the word would more often be applied to women, as witnessed by John Lyly’s 1580 edition of his Euphues:

Faire Lady, if it be the guise of Italy to welcome straungers with straungnesse, I must needes say the custome is straunge and the country barbarous, if the manner of Ladyes to salute Gentlemen with coynesse, then I am enforced to think the women voyde of curtesie to use such welcome, and the men past shame that will come. But heereafter I will eyther bringe a stoole on mine arme for an unbidden guest, or a visarde on my face for a shamelesse gossippe.

The verb to gossip, meaning to engage in rumormongering dates to at least 1631, when Michael Drayton uses it in his poem “The Moone-Calfe”:

Amongst the rest, at the Worlds labour there,
For good old Women, most especiall were,
Which had bene iolly Wenches in their dayes,
Through all the Parish, and had borne the prayse,
For merry Tales: one Mother Red-Cap hight,
And Mother Howlet somewhat ill of sight,
For she had hurt her eyes with watching late;
Them Mother Bumby a mad iocund Mate
As euer Gossipt, and with her there came
Olde Gammer Gurton, a right plesant Dame,
As the best of them; being thus together,
The bus'nesse done for which they had come thither.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the verb was turned back into a noun, this time referring to the talk and rumor itself. On 14 December 1791, the Times of London runs what looks to be the opening scene of a play entitled The Gossip Shop about a place where people gather to hear news from abroad:

The Gossip Shop.
A Serio-Comic Operatical Farce,
As It Is Now Performing Opposite Burlington-House in Piccadilly

The description of the location indicates that the shop is supposed to be Fortnum and Mason, a department store which still exists at that spot. I don’t know whether this is the first scene in an actual play, or if it’s just a short, humorous piece the paper ran. Regardless, the word is being used as a noun to mean rumor and sensational news.

And on 31 October 1792, the newspaper the World runs this tidbit about operatic soprano Anna Storace:

Storace, Green-Room Gossip has it, is no longer the captive of her once favorite composer.

And on 8 May 1794, the Oracle and Public Advertiser writes about the port of Ostend in what is now Belgium:

The coffee houses are places for gossip and play—but few papers are to be found there; and, what may be thought rather extraordinary, not a Parisian Print is here to be seen or obtained.

The word has come a long way from godparent to salacious news.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. god-sibb.

“The Drama.” World (London), 31 October 1792, 2. Gale News Vault.

Drayton, Michael. “The Moone-Calfe.” The Battaile of Agincourt. London: Augustine Mathewes for William Lee, 1631, 237. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“The Gossip Shop.” Times (London), 14 December 1791, 2. Gale News Vault.

Horace. A Medicinable Morall. Thomas Drant, trans. London: Thomas Marshe, 1566, sig. Hviij. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Lyly, John. Euphues. London: Gabriel Cawood, 1580, 11r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. god-sib(be, n.

“Ostend.” Oracle and Public Advertiser (London), 8 May 1794, 3. Gale News Vault.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. gossip, n., gossip, v.

Treharne, Elaine. “The Fox and the Wolf.” Old and Middle English, c.890–c.1400: An Anthology, second edition. Maldon, MA: Blackwell, 2004,336.

Wulfstan. “Sermo Lupi ad Anglos.” In Dorothy Behurum, ed. The Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957, 258.

n——r / n-word

10 November 2020

[Note: This word is perhaps the most offensive one in present-day English. I use the n-word in this entry only because the word has various forms and spellings that have changed over time and that connote different meanings. It’s impossible to clearly explain such differences when the word is expurgated. In this entry, I expurgate the double-g spelling of the n-word everywhere except the first reference, even in quotations where I mark the expurgation in square brackets, while leaving the older, variant forms intact. My hope is that this will allow a clear explanation of the word’s history while minimizing the offense it may cause.

 If anyone is offended by my use of the word in this entry, please accept my apologies, and let me know how I have offended or erred. I will listen and make changes as appropriate.

In this entry, I explain the word’s history. For commentary on why it is not appropriate for White people to use the word, see my post on “Should a White Person Ever Use the N-word?”]

The history of the word nigger is etymologically straightforward and semantically complex. When used by White people, the word has, from its first appearance in English, been a derogatory one. But as used by Black people, the word has a range of nuanced senses and connotations, although these uses by Black people remain controversial, with some saying the word is so polluted that it should never be used by anyone.

The n-word is borrowed from the French nègre, which borrowed it from the Spanish negro, a word which was also borrowed into English directly from Spanish at about the same time. The root literally means black. In French, it appears by 1516 as a noun in the sense of a Black person and as an adjective by 1611. But while n——r and negro both started out as simple descriptive terms, without any negative connotation, n——r quickly acquired such negative connotations in English usage.

The word appears in English with the form neiger in Thomas Hacket’s 1568 translation from the French of André Thevet’s The New Found Worlde. The passage quoted here uses the word as a description of skin color but with a connotation of White racial superiority. It also portrays an Early Modern version of scientific racism, where environmental conditions were thought to affect the bodily humors and cause the darkening of the skin and purportedly making Black persons inferior to White persons:

Then to the skin of this people so burned, there resteth but the earthly parte of the humor, the others being dispersed which causeth the coulour. I said they were fearful, bicause of the inward coldnesse: for hardinesse and manhoode commeth not, but with a vehement heate of the heart. The which causeth the Englishmen, & those that are vnder the North Pole, which co[n]trary are cold without, but maruelous hot within, to be hardy, couragious, & ful of great boldnesse. Therfore these Neigers haue their heade curled, their téethe white, great lips, croked legges, the women vnconstant, with many other vices which wold be to long to reherse

The word, with the spelling niger, appears a few years later in Edward Hellowe’s 1577 translation of the letters of Antonio de Guevara. Here the word is merely descriptive, with no implications of racial difference, although the passage does reflect anti-Semitic attitudes:

There is not any nation in this world, be it never so barbarous, that hath not some place to retire unto, or some captein to defend them, the Garamants of Asia, the Massagetes bordering upo[n] the Indians, & the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witness, except you most miserable Iewes, the which in all places and countries be fugitives and captiues.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) distinguishes these earlier variants from the double-g spelling, placing them in separate entries. But this distinction makes little sense to me. Both forms follow the same etymological path, and their senses are not all that different. The one entry simply contains older forms of the same word.

The double-g spelling appears by 1608 in a letter by Anthony Marlowe, a representative of the East India Company, to his superiors back in London describing an encounter that happened in August 1607. Marlowe uses the word to denote indigenous Brazilians, not Africans, and his use is a patronizing one, connoting a sense of White racial superiority:

August 6 came to anchor in Serro Leona river, this place proved a happy place to us, for here at little charge we got up our men with limes, water and fish. In this river the Portugal hath trade, commodities gold and elephant's teeth, it is a goodly river, the navigation of it bold and good for any ship to come on the south side.

The King and people n[——]rs, simple and harmless.

By the late eighteenth century, the n-word is clearly being used as a term of contempt. Here is an example from a British song mocking George Washington and the troops of the Continental Army upon the occasion of Washington assuming command of the Army on 3 July 1775 at Cambridge Massachusetts:

Full many a child went into camp,
All dressed in homespun kersey,
To see the greatest rebel scamp
That ever cross'd o'er Jersey.

The rebel clowns, oh! what a sight!
Too awkward was their figure.
'Twas yonder stood a pious wight,
And here and there a n[——]r.

Upon a stump, he placed (himself,)
Great Washington did he,
And through the nose of lawyer Close
Proclaimed great Liberty.

So, as used by White people, the n-word became progressively more derogatory over the centuries, but its use among Black people is more nuanced.

There is a history of Black people in America using the term neutrally, but often this is in conversation with White people—the enslaved person using the term of the oppressor to curry favor or at least avoid punishment—and often such instances that are recorded are ventriloquized or mediated by White writers. The Oxford English Dictionary, in its sense A.I.1.c. “used by black people (esp. African Americans) as a neutral or favourable term” gives four nineteenth-century examples, but all four are by White writers attempting to portray Black speech, including an example from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Many of the uses in this sense are a form of verbal blackface, where White writers attempt to use Black dialect to mock and denigrate as a form of entertainment for White readers.

Instead, when we look at how actual Black writers in the nineteenth century use the n-word, they adopt it when they are quoting White people, speaking to White people from a position of subservience, or speaking among themselves but using the word to connote their servile or abject condition.

There are a fair number of published works by Black American writers in the nineteenth century, many of them narratives by formerly enslaved persons. But in these narratives the word is rarely used, except when quoting White people. For example, Frederick Douglass’s 1846 Narrative of the Life, which is perhaps the most famous of these narratives, uses the word eight times, always quoting a White person.

But there are some examples in these narratives of Black people using the term among themselves. For example, there is this passage from Lewis Clarke’s 1845 autobiography describing his emotions upon arriving in Canada and to freedom. Note, though, that Clarke’s use is in the context of master-slave power differential and connotes a servile position. It is not a word a free person would use to describe themselves:

When I stepped ashore here, I said, sure enough I AM FREE. Good heaven! what a sensation, when it first visits the bosom of a full grown man—one, born to bondage—one, who had been taught from early infancy, that this was his inevitable lot for life. Not till then, did I dare to cherish for a moment the feeling that one of the limbs of my body, was my own. The slaves often say, when cut in the hand or foot, "plague on the old foot, or the old hand, it is master's—let him take care of it—N[——]r don 't care if he never get well." My hands, my feet, were now my own. But what to do with them was the next question.

Solomon Northup in his 1853 Twelve Years a Slave shows how the word could be used among enslaved Blacks to mark a social hierarchy:

Patsey is twenty-three—also from Buford's plantation. She is in no wise connected with the others, but glories in the fact that she is the offspring of a "Guinea n[——]r," brought over to Cuba in a slave ship, and in the course of trade transferred to Buford, who was her mother's owner.

John Andrew Jackson, in his 1862 narrative, uses the word adjectively to mark something that is associated with or belonging to enslaved persons, in this case the slave quarters:

Mack English, having turned a wishful eye on Rose, wrapped himself up in his big cloak, and went to the n[——]r-house in the night, and called a slave named Esau, and told him to tell Rose to come to him as he wanted her.

And in her 1862 narrative Harriet Jacobs shows a Black woman using the word in a sense that would be common among Black speakers by the turn of the twenty-first century, that of a strong and assertive Black person:

If dey did know whar you are, dey won't know now. Dey'll be disapinted dis time. Dat's all I got to say. If dey comes rummagin 'mong my tings, dey'll get one bressed sarssin from dis 'ere n[——]r.

In the early twentieth century we see the appearance of the non-rhotic variant n[——]ah in Leon Harris’s 1925 telling of the story of the Black folk-hero John Henry. In this passage, the character Shine is speaking to fellow Black railroad workers. They are free men, but performing menial labor:

“Howdy n[——]ahs,” he commenced, “how’s you all dis mawnin’. ‘Lo ole man! Wot you doin’ sittin’ up heah lookin’ lak Rain-In-De-Face?”

He dropped the hammer and hand drill, threw his head back, opened wide his mouth and began singing:

“Keeps on a-rainin’, podnor,
N[——]ah can’t make no time.”

Harris, a Black writer, originally published his version of the John Henry story in the Black journal The Messenger. When called upon to reprint it in 1957 for Phylon Quarterly, a journal that focuses on culture and race in the United States but with a more racially mixed readership, n[——]ah was changed to folkses and nobody. Why the change was made is not known. Perhaps it was imposed by the editors. Or perhaps the intervening years had made the word more unacceptable. Or perhaps Harris thought it inappropriate to use it when writing for a more racially diverse readership.

Harris’s use of the non-rhotic n[——]ah presages the use of n[——]a by later rap artists and other Black speakers. And since the late twentieth century and the advent of Hip-Hop culture, some Black speakers and writers have actively tried to reclaim the n-word and use it positively, although that attempt has been criticized by those who consider the word irredeemable and object to any use of it. Much of the controversy over whether or not the term should ever by used focuses on this non-rhotic variant. And some even consider n[——]a to be a distinct word.

In her dictionary of Black speech, Black Talk, Geneva Smitherman gives seven distinct senses for n[——]a when used by Black people:

1. a close friend
2. a person rooted in Black culture and experience
3. a neutral term for a Black person
4. a Black woman’s term for her Black boyfriend
5. a rebellious, assertive, unconventional Black man
6. the negative, stereotypical sense of the n-word as used by Whites
7. a cool person, rooted in Hip-Hop culture.

I’m not going to give examples of each of these senses, but an example of Smitherman’s sense number six can be found in the 1992 rap song “Mnniiggaahh” by the duo Goldmoney:

I'm a n[——]a
But that is just the way that I choose to act
It ain't got nothin' to do with bein' black
“All n[——]s are black”
Shut up, fool, how ya figure?
'Cause where I'm from there's a lot of white n[——]s
Like the one who likes to stick his tongue out
At a girl when he meets 'er

Attempts to avoid using the word led to creation of the euphemism n-word, which is recorded from the early 1980s, but is probably older, as evidenced by this use in the 1971 poem “What It Means to Be an ‘N’” by Frenchy Jolene Hodges:

If what is said reaches you
Though you don’t know where or when,
It’s a cinch you’ve had the experience
You know what it means to an “N”.

And use of n-word is clearly in place by 1981 as evidenced by this article in the 17 July 1981 issue of Ohio’s Chillicothe Gazette:

She said she won’t stand for the use of what she calls the “N-word” in her presence.

So, when used by White people, the term’s history renders it as a term of abuse and contempt, regardless of the intentions of the speaker. But when used by Black people, the term is complex and nuanced, with many meanings, negative, neutral, and even positive, but even in such positive uses there are many who object to its use.

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Sources:

Brackens, Odis (Bigg Money Odis) and Ramon Russel Gooden (Pee-Wee). “Mnniiggaahh.” In Lawrence A. Stanley, Rap: The Lyrics, New York: Penguin, 1992, 143. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Clarke, Lewis. Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke. Boston: David H. Ela, 1845, 38–39. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Harris, Leon R. “That Steel-Drivin’ Man.” Phylon Quarterly, 18.4, 1957, 402–03. JSTOR.

———. “The Steel-Drivin’ Man” (1925). In Alan Dundes, Mother Wit From the Laughing Barrell. New York: Garland, 1981, 563–64. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Hellowes, Edward, trans. The Familiar Epistles of Sir Anthonie of Gueuara. London: Ralph Newberrie, 1577, 389. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Hodges, Frenchy Jolene. “What It Means to Be an “N.” Black Wisdom. Detroit, Broadside Press, 1971, 25. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Jackson, John Andrew. The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina. London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1862, 12–13. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Jacobs, Harriet A. The Deeper Wrong, or, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. L. Maria Child, ed. London: W. Tweedie, 1862, 158. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Marlowe, Anthony. “Letter, 22 June 1608.” Letters Received by the East India Company From Its Servants in the East, vol. 1. London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1896, 10. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Musgrave, Jane. “Love is the Key to Mixed Marriages.” Chillicothe Gazette (Ohio), 17 July 1981, 7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

“North American Slave Narratives.” Documenting the American South. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Library.

Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave. Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1853, 186. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2003, s.v. n[——]r, n. and adj., neger, n. and adj.2, Negro, n. and adj.; March 2004, s.v. N-word, n.

Smitherman, Geneva. Black Talk. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, 210–11.

Thevet, André. The New Found Worlde. Thomas Hacket, trans. London: Henry Bynnemann, 1568 25. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Trip to Cambridge.” Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution. Frank Moore, ed. New York: D. Appleton, 1856, 101. HathiTrust Digital Archive.