Race and Language; or, Adventures with the OED
Posted Wednesday, May 15, 2002

We recall a few years back a minor spat that turned into a major spat in Washington, D.C., about the use of the word niggardly in a government office. It became such a major spat, in fact, that we seem to recall several people losing their jobs and being sued because of perceived racial insensitivity.

Now, we are not going to take sides in this issue lest we ourselves be accused of being racist, even if we don't believe ourselves to be so. The so-called n-word -- as the word has entered the (white) US media's vocabulary -- is, in a way, buried in niggardly, which set off that whole spat. The OED remains curiously silent on the word's etymology: if one follows the etymology of niggardy at www.oed.com, one eventually -- after wading through every permutation of the word obscure possible -- will end up at the word nig, which, to be honest, has quite clear overtones picked up from nineteenth-century American history. Those of us who then happen to ask the OED to describe the origins of nig find this: "Of obscure origin. Agrees in meaning with Sw. njugg (dial. nugg, nygg) and with Icel. hnögg- (Norw. nögg), but there is no obvious connexion in form or history with these. Cf. also Norw. and Sw. dial. nigla, to live sparingly, to NIGGLE."

But you'll keep in mind also Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black in a Two-Story White House, North, Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There, published in Boston in 1859, an important text in African American literary history. There, we think, the meaning is clear.

Now, mind you, we are not trying to pick any fights here or, really, take any sides: we are just trying to sketch out some issues and to point out how slippery language ultimately is, esp as it passes through history and picks up unexpected -- and unwanted -- meanings that must be acknowledged and discussed. We are trying to be rational here, so you should be too.

With thoughts like these, then, we read an article in today's Daily Telegraph, that delightful journal of English conservatism that simply can't deal with race worth a damn, in our humble opinion. Today, though, they pointed out what struck us as a rather odd connotation of nitty gritty that we didn't know: that it was used to refer to slaves in the lower reaches of a slave ship.

Now we don't necessarily want to side with the Telegraph here -- the rest of the article becomes a gleeful, sophomoric ticking off of other "forbidden" words -- but we must say that this seems a disturbing connotation to be stuck on nitty gritty and an even more disturbing example of poltically motivated language policing.

But the OED simply ain't helping us here. How does it define the word? It's US slang, yes. Etymology obscure, of course. The definition? "The realities or basic facts of a problem, situation, subject, etc." Sure, fine. But the first few example sentences?

1963 Time 2 Aug. 14/2 The Negroes present would know perfectly well that the nitty-gritty of a situation is the essentials of it. 1963 Wall St. Jrnl. 12 Sept. 14/1 Says W. C. Patton, field secretary for..the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. ‘Now we're down to the nitty-gritty, the hard core who've never been interested in politics.’ 1967 Freedomways VII. 186 All those ‘nitty gritty’ actions and styles which set Negroes off from the rest of American society. [again, from www.oed.com]

This leaves us feeling disturbed. There is no such thing as a coincidence, you know...