niggerly

English

Etymology

From nigger +‎ -ly.

Adjective

niggerly (comparative more niggerly, superlative most niggerly)

1. (derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) Niggerlike.
   • 1885, James Hogg, Florence Marryat, London Society, volume 47, page 289:

     a nice, clean, tidy, healthy little city, with a native population neither so thoroughly niggerly, nude and nidorous as it was when my lines were cast there.

   • 1988, Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Reading Race:

     And again: to be niggerly is not necessarily to be niggardly. It is niggerly for instance to single out Fannie Stearns Davis for dispraise, but it can't be called niggardly to name nobody else in the world but to praise them.

   • 1988, Adrienne Kennedy, Adrienne Kennedy in One Act, page 10:

     He was a wild black beast who raped my mother. […] Ever since I can remember he's been in a nigger pose of agony. He is the wilderness. He speaks niggerly groveling about wanting to touch me with his black hand.

Usage notes

• Not to be confused with the similar-sounding niggardly (“miserly, stingy”).

Anagrams

• gingerly