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Answers: Many people go on about the fact that popular music often refers to the word in it's lyrics. And that whilst it appears to be acceptable for black people to use it, it is the opposite for white people.

But how many people know the origins of the word? I have one version of the origins, does anyone else know?

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Wordorigins.org
******
Dave Wilton, Monday, December 25, 2006

This most offensive of words in American speech dates to the late 16th century, although the modern spelling doesn’t appear until some two centuries later. The modern word ****** is a variant of an older term, neger, pronounced with a long /ee/ sound, which is still in use in Caribbean dialect. It comes from the French nègre, in use to mean a black person since at least 1516, and ultimately from the Latin niger, meaning black. The word negro comes from the same Latin root, although the route negro took into English was via Spanish, not French.

The word, in its neger form, first appears in Thomas Hacket’s 1568 translation of A. Thevet’s New Found Worlde:

Also ye Neigers eat these Lezards, so do the Indians of America.

The pronunciation with the shorter /i/ sound appears a bit later, in Edward Hellowes’s 1574 translation of Guevara’s Familiar Epistles:

The Massgets bordering upon the Indians, and the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witnes. [The original Spanish is los negros en Ethiopia.]

The modern gg spelling doesn’t appear until the late-18th century. From Frank Moore’s 1775 Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution:

The rebel clowns, oh! what a sight! Too awkward was their figure. ‘Twas yonder stood a pious wight, And here and there a ******.

****** is highly offensive, especially when used by whites. Along with ****, it is perhaps one of the two most offensive words in modern English. This was not always the case, however. The word was originally neutral and only began to acquire an offensive cast in the mid-18th century.

Among African Americans, the word has a history of being used to refer to a person regardless of skin color. George F. Ruxton’s 1848 Life in the Far West uses the word to refer to a white person:

What does the niggur say?

Other examples of blacks using the term in reference to whites can be found, although more commonly it is used to refer to a close, black friend, as in this example from J.A. Harrison’s 1884 Negro English:

To tu’n er ****** right loose, to give a man free play.

In recent years, this sense has been used in a politically motivated attempt to reclaim the word by African Americans and make it less offensive. While somewhat successful in this regard, the term is still considered highly offensive when used by whites and this reclamation itself is controversial. Many consider the term offensive regardless of the race of the utterer.

****** is etymologically unrelated to the word niggard.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd Edition)

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I've long presumed it started out as a derivative of "negro", which slack-jawed white morons down south wouldn't be inclined to want to produce correctly. Slaves back then were called either negroes or "the blacks."

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How about the fact that the word is also the country of Niger in Africa

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It used to be a term used to describe people from the Niger basin. Since then it has expanded to include all black people and even Arabs but usually used as a derogatory term.

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didn't you just ask a similar question a few minutes ago and it go deleted? i'm sure you did....so no comment...not interested....

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For centuries, it has held negative connotations, an in modern times it is considered a racial slur in most contexts.[1] Modern colloquial uses include a synonym for "person" and an effort to "reclaim" the word for black people (see *****), which remains a controversial topic.

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look my question was just removed:

Isn't it a bit racialist that black people can use the word n!gger but white people cant...?
In Polls & Surveys - Asked by Gangster - 54 answers - 21 minutes ago- (Question has been removed)

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I don't want to know...it is a racist term that just causes outbursts of anger. Why bother with it? It is derived from the wood negro / negra etc etc. It is a term that should just be BANNED period. Just your asking this questions is reason enough to get 'it' going again.

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In the United Kingdom, "the N word is established as a derogatory and often "criminal" word, but as recently as the 1950s it was widely regarded as acceptable in Britain for black people to be referred to as *******. By the 1970s, this and other offensive racial slurs had been outlawed by stricter government legislation.

Historically, British people would often describe a dark shade of brown as "N- brown", but this and all other uses of the word have long since been rendered politically incorrect in Britain

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It is from the Latin for 'Black'.

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I think it comes from old Caribbean dialect.

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I was always led to believe that is simply a derivative of 'Niger' which is Latin for Black

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