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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

nigger.

A black person; a person of black African descent.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈnɪɡə(ɹ)/Received-Pronunciation/ˈnɪɡɚ/General-American
  1. A black person; a person of black African descent.

    ethnic · offensive · slur · vulgar
  2. A black person; a person of black African descent. A person of black African descent who behaves badly or unconventionally (whether the speaker approves or disapproves).

    ethnic · offensive · slang · slur · vulgar
  3. A member of any typically dark-skinned people (now especially in combinations like prairie nigger or sand nigger).

    ethnic · offensive · slur · vulgar
  4. A friend, particularly a fellow black person (often as an informal term of address).

  5. A person of any kind (particularly as a term of abuse).

    figuratively
  6. A member of a group that is oppressed or marginalized in the manner of black people.

    especially · offensive
  7. Any of various dark animals: Any member of species Girella tricuspidata (luderick).

    offensive
  8. Any of various dark animals: A dark brown nymphalid butterfly, Orsotriaena medus, of south Asia, southeast Asia, and Australia.

    dated · offensive
  9. Any of various dark animals: A kind of sea cucumber, Holothuria forskali, the cotton-spinner.

    Cornwall · UK · archaic · offensive
  10. Any of various dark animals: The larva of the turnip sawfly, an agricultural pest.

    archaic · offensive
  11. An impurity in the covering of an electrical conductor which serves to make a partial short circuit, and thus becomes sufficiently heated to burn and destroy the insulation.

    archaic
  12. A strong iron-bound timber with sharp teeth or spikes protruding from its front face, forming part of the machinery of a sawmill, and used in canting logs, etc.

    archaic
  13. A steam-capstan on some Mississippi river boats, used to haul the boat over bars and snags by a rope fastened to a tree on the bank.

    US · archaic
  14. A black screen used in conjunction with the camera to block light or produce special lighting effects.

    dated
Where this word comes from

Alteration of earlier neger, from Middle French nègre (“a black person”), from Spanish negro. Ultimately from Latin niger (“black”), thus a doublet of negro and noir. The expected Modern English pronunciation would be with /iː/; compare neger. The modern pronunciation with /ɪ/ may be due to influence from the Latin etymon (compare the older Southern US pronunciation of negro with /ɪ/), but compare the dialectal American pronunciations of eagle and eager as /ˈɪɡəl/ and /ˈɪɡɚ/. Compare Danish neger, Swedish neger, German Neger, Dutch neger. First use appears c. 1577, in the writings of Edward Hellowes (fl. 1574–1601).

verb/ˈnɪɡə(ɹ)/Received-Pronunciation/ˈnɪɡɚ/General-American
  1. To clear land by laying light pieces of round timber across the trunks of the trees and setting fire to them at the point of contact, by which means the trees are slowly burned through.

    dated · transitive
  2. To exhaust (soil) by cropping it year by year without manure.

    dated · transitive
  3. To perform in blackface.

    intransitive · offensive
  4. To behave as a stereotypical black person.

    intransitive · offensive
  5. To treat as inferior.

    offensive · transitive · uncommon
Where this word comes from

Alteration of earlier neger, from Middle French nègre (“a black person”), from Spanish negro. Ultimately from Latin niger (“black”), thus a doublet of negro and noir. The expected Modern English pronunciation would be with /iː/; compare neger. The modern pronunciation with /ɪ/ may be due to influence from the Latin etymon (compare the older Southern US pronunciation of negro with /ɪ/), but compare the dialectal American pronunciations of eagle and eager as /ˈɪɡəl/ and /ˈɪɡɚ/. Compare Danish neger, Swedish neger, German Neger, Dutch neger. First use appears c. 1577, in the writings of Edward Hellowes (fl. 1574–1601).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.