StubsOnAsura the Shady wrote:
His Excellency Soracloud wrote:
I guess he is using the word for what it actually means; ignorant.
ORLY? Is that the Webster definition? Cuz, you know, I always thought @#%^
was a vulgar distortion of negro.
Vulgar through its developed use. Before the 19th century, neither form was considered pejorative in and of itself. Linguistically it is just a phonemic doublet of negro, codescended from
niger, meaning black in Latin.
The path was: niger (Latin) -> negro (Spanish) -> negre (French) -> neger (Middle English) -> nig
ger (Modern English).
This is, of course, not to be confused with the word "niggardly," meaning stingy, which comes to English from Old Norse and is in no way related.