n-word

plural n-words · alternative N-word

1. euphemisticThe word nigger or nigga.

   Don't say the N word if you a good person Unless you black, then it's ok.

   2022, “Don't Say the N Word”performed by Lil Equality

   5 more examples

   The prosecutor, his voice trembling, added that the "N-word" was so vile that he would not utter it.

   1995 January 14, Kenneth B. Noble, “Issue of Racism Erupts in Simpson Trial”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Jackson's character plays an illegal arms dealer and uses the "n-word" throughout the film, which also stars Pam Grier.

   1998, Johnson Publishing Company (publisher), “Samuel L. Jackson Blasts Spike Lee For Criticizing Him For Using 'N-Word' In 'Jackie Brown'”, in Jet, volume 93, number 15, page 36

   I do not use “children”, because I see that word as being an equivalent to the N-word in this context [the out-right slavery that those under 18 face]. “Childish”, “child-like”, etc. usually have very negative or derogatory connotations.

   2004 February-March [1978 December 14], (I)An-ok Ta Chai, “Youth Liberation”, in Slingshot, number #80

   That well-spoken token, who ain't been heard / The only white rapper who's allowed to say the N-word

   2011, “Backpackers”, in Camp, performed by Childish Gambino

   [Pain and sorrow are feelings] that has not lessened no matter how many times I hear the n-word.

   2013, “Combating Huck Finn 's Censorship”, in Julie Landsman, Robert Simmons III, Steven Grineski, editors, Talking About Race

   Synonyms: n-bomb

2. euphemisticby generalizationAny word, regardless of its starting letter, that is used oppressively, marginalizes or oppresses a group of people.

   [I]t was effectively the N-word for Brown people.

   2022, Ali Hassan, Is There Bacon in Heaven?, page 128

   2 more examples

   [It] has become ... an equivalent of the n word for Maori[s].

   2006, DLT, “Native Tongues”, in Total Chaos

   "It's important to understand that for Indigenous people, this word ["savage"] is our N-word," said Douglas Stewart, an Indigenous teacher at Harrison Trimble High School in Moncton.

   2019 October 2, “'This word is our N-word': Indigenous teacher asks Urban Planet to drop racial slur”, in CBC

3. euphemisticThe word Nazi.

   After that episode aired a new rule was posted: "Do not mention the N Word (Nazi)!"

   2009, Todd Wilbur, Top Secret Recipes Unlocked: All New Home Clones of America's Favorite Brand-Name Foods

   3 more examples

   The preceding poem inspired the “Not Say Nazi” movement to stamp out widespread ignorance and to abolish the N-word and the F-word.

   2014, Ian Tinny, Rex Curry, Rex Curry BFFs Analects, →ISBN

   By dropping the N-word, you don't just stop the thinking processes in most of your audience; if you're not careful, you also stop your own mind from functioning. Most of these Nazi detectives conclude with their "revelation" that X has Nazi connections, and then expect the public to erupt in indignant outbursts of hate against X.

   2015, Koenraad Elst, Return of the Swastika: Hate and Hysteria versus Hindu Sanity, page 67

   Americans realize that von Braun had been a member of the Nazi party and an officer in the SS and that the V-2 was constructed using forced labor from concentration camps who were worked to death (2012). NASA refused to budge from its position. Regrettably, CFCH retreated and removed the offending N word.

   2016, Olivia Cadaval, Sojin Kim, Diana Baird N'Diaye, Curatorial Conversations

4. governmentThe word nuclear.

   ‘Are you going to tell me the N word?” ‘N word?’ ’Nuclear.’

   2011, Jeff Abbott, Adrenaline, London: Hachette, page 186

   5 more examples

   Parkinson has to live with the dreaded “N” word. So feared is the word “nuclear” that there are those who balk at using such harmless phrases as “nuclear family”.

   1988 December 10, “Unclear Power”, in New Scientist, page 12

   —and there is a large tendency, I think, to think of our sites totally in terms of the “n” word, the nuclear radioactive word, but 80 percent of the waste that we have on these sites is chemical hazardous waste , which makes us no different in that respect from all of the major industrial companies in the United States who have to deal with this problem.

   1994 March 24, J. Bennett Johnston, US. Senator from Louisiana, Effect of the Administration's Superfund Reauthorization Proposals on the Department of Energy's Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Program. Hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources – United States Senate One Hundred Third Congress. Second Session, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, page 5

   Their methods depend on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a technology widely used by physicists, chemists, and biologists to analyze molecular structures and by doctors for medical diagnosis. In its medical setting NMR is better known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a name that avoids unnecessarily provoking fears over the dreaded N-word: nuclear. Nuclear magnetic resonance actually doesn’t involve radioactivity or any ionizing radiation but instead uses harmless but powerful magnetic fields and pulses of radio waves to probe the atomic nuclei that quietly reside within all materials, chemical and biological.

   2001 August 14, Julian Brown, David Deutsch, Quest for the Quantum Computer, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 252

   'Plus of course, there's the “N” word - nuclear is a big no, no, in British politics. Successive governments, both Labour and Tory, have shied away from doing what they both know is actually unavoidable.'

   2010, Keith Milligan, The Crosses of Aiolos: A Tale of Wind and Wallets, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 121

   The machine was originally called NMRI, but "nuclear" is one of the two forbidden "n" words of our times.

   2022, Neil deGrasse Tyson, chapter 10, in Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, page 192

5. human sciencesA negation word, such as not, nobody, or nothing.

   Hence, the reasoning applied to (15) above extends to (20), leading us to conclude that the n-word rien,

   2011, Vivian Dèprez, The Evolution of Negation, page 242

6. human sciencesA Danish/Swedish/Norwegian noun of the common gender (their indefinite article being en), as opposed to t-words, nouns of the neuter gender (their indefinite article being et).

plural N-words

1. Alternative letter-case form of n-word.

   Some middle schoolers are learning that history isn’t always meant to be celebrated after the N-word was inadvertently printed on the front cover of their yearbooks.

   2017 June 7, AnneClaire Stapleton, “Students get yearbooks with N-word on the cover”, in CNN, archived from the original on 30 Jul 2019