n-word

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See also: N-word

English

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Noun

n-word (plural n-words)

  1. (euphemistic) The word nigger or nigga or nigra.
    Synonym: n-bomb
    • 1995 January 14, Kenneth B. Noble, “Issue of Racism Erupts in Simpson Trial”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:
      The prosecutor, his voice trembling, added that the "N-word" was so vile that he would not utter it.
    • 2011, “Backpackers”, in Camp, performed by Childish Gambino:
      That well-spoken token, who ain't been heard / The only white rapper who's allowed to say the N-word
    • 2013, “Combating Huck Finn 's Censorship”, in Julie Landsman, Robert Simmons III, Steven Grineski, editors, Talking About Race:
      [Pain and sorrow are feelings] that has not lessened no matter how many times I hear the n-word.
    • 2022, “Don't Say the N Word”‎performed by Lil Equality:
      Don't say the N word if you a good person
      Unless you black, then it's ok.
  2. (euphemistic, by generalization) Any word, regardless of its starting letter, that is used oppressively, marginalizes or oppresses a group of people.
    • 2006, DLT, “Native Tongues”, in Total Chaos:
      [It] has become ... an equivalent of the n word for Maori[s].
    • 2019 October 2, “'This word is our N-word': Indigenous teacher asks Urban Planet to drop racial slur”, in CBC‎:
      "It's important to understand that for Indigenous people, this word is our N-word," said Douglas Stewart, an Indigenous teacher at Harrison Trimble High School in Moncton.
    • 2022, Ali Hassan, Is There Bacon in Heaven?, page 128:
      [I]t was effectively the N-word for Brown people.
  3. (euphemistic) The word Nazi.
    • 2009, Todd Wilbur, Top Secret Recipes Unlocked: All New Home Clones of America's Favorite Brand-Name Foods:
      After that episode aired a new rule was posted: "Do not mention the N Word (Nazi)!"
    • 2014, Ian Tinny, Rex Curry, Rex Curry BFFs Analects, →ISBN:
      The preceding poem inspired the “Not Say Nazi” movement to stamp out widespread ignorance and to abolish the N-word and the F-word.
    • 2015, Koenraad Elst, Return of the Swastika: Hate and Hysteria versus Hindu Sanity, page 67:
      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.
    • 2016, Olivia Cadaval, Sojin Kim, Diana Baird N'Diaye, Curatorial Conversations:
      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.
  4. (politics) The word nuclear.
    • 1988 December 10, “Unclear Power”, in New Scientist‎, page 12:
      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”.
    • 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:
      —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.
    • 2001 August 14, Julian Brown, David Deutsch, Quest for the Quantum Computer‎, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 252:
      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.
    • 2010, Keith Milligan, The Crosses of Aiolos: A Tale of Wind and Wallets, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 121:
      '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.'
    • 2011, Jeff Abbott, Adrenalin, London: Hachette, page 186:
      ‘Are you going to tell me the N word?”
      ‘N word?’
      ’Nuclear.’
    • 2022, Neil deGrasse Tyson, chapter 10, in Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, page 192:
      The machine was originally called NMRI, but "nuclear" is one of the two forbidden "n" words of our times.
  5. (linguistics) A negation word, such as not, nobody, or nothing.
    • 2011, Vivian Dèprez, The Evolution of Negatation, page 242:
      Hence, the reasoning applied to (15) above extends to (20), leading us to conclude that the n-word rien,
  6. (linguistics) A 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).

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