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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

n-word en · NOUN

Meanings

  1. (euphemistic) The word nigger or nigga.
    • 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:
    • 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:
    • [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:
    • 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:
    • 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:
  2. (euphemistic, qualifier:by generalization) Any word, regardless of its starting letter, that is used oppressively, marginalizes or oppresses a group of people.
    • "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:
    • [It] has become ... an equivalent of the n''' word for Maori[s]. 2006, DLT, “Native Tongues”, in Total Chaos:
    • [I]t was effectively the N-word for Brown people. 2022, Ali Hassan, Is There Bacon in Heaven?, page 128:
  3. (euphemistic) The word Nazi.
    • 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:
    • 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:
    • 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:
    • 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:
  4. The word nuclear.
    • 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:
    • 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:
    • —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:
    • 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:
    • ‘Are you going to tell me the N word?” ‘N word?’ ’Nuclear.’ 2011, Jeff Abbott, Adrenaline, London: Hachette, page 186:
  5. A 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. 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).

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
n-words Number=Plur lexicographic
N-word alternative lexicographic

Deriveds

N-tower · n-word pass · n-word privileges

Relateds

r-word · i-word · y-word · r-slur · q-word · n-bomb · f-slur · j-word · p-word · f-word · x-word · w-word · o-word · e-word · d-word · b-word · k-word · v-word · u-word · s-word · a-word (‘x’-word euphemisms) · Q-word · z-word · t-word · L-bomb · l-word · f-bomb · related terms C-bomb · h-word · g-word · G-word · Q-slur · m-word · c-word

Synonyms

n-bomb

Translations (8)

ru н-сло́во (euphemism for “nigger”) · fr mot en N (euphemism for “nigger”) · nl n-woord (euphemism for “nigger”) · fi n-sana (euphemism for “nigger”) · de N-Wort (euphemism for “nigger”) · sv n-ord (euphemism for “nigger”) · cs negr (euphemism for “nigger”) · uk н-сло́во (euphemism for “nigger”)