Wog

Wog is a word with several meanings, one commonly derogatory, the others not.

As a racial epithet in British English

British racial term originating in the colonial period of the British Empire. It was generally used as a label for the natives of India, North Africa and the Middle East. By the 1950s it had become a pejorative term used in order to offend.

Related Topics:
British - British Empire - India - North Africa - Middle East - 1950s

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The origins of the term are unclear. Most dictionaries say "wog" either possibly or likely derives from the generic term golliwog after the Golliwogg, a "grotesque" blackface minstrel doll-character from a children's book published in 1895. Various facetious explanations include the claim that it originated from acronyms for "Worthy/Wily Oriental Gentleman" or variants thereof, or for "Workers of Government", used to refer to early immigrants into the United Kingdom. Such attempts to explain the word's origin are apocryphal at best and have no foundation in fact.

Related Topics:
Golliwogg - Blackface - Minstrel - Orient - United Kingdom

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The use of the word is discouraged in Britain, and most dictionaries refer to the word with the caution that it is slang, derogatory, and offensive. James Robertson & Sons, a British manufacturer of jams and preserves, discontinued use of the Golliwog as its trademark in the early 1990s for similar reasons. It is generally considered unwise to use it in modern Britain without expecting an extreme reaction.

Related Topics:
Slang - 1990s

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The phrase "The wogs start at Calais" is commonly used to characterise a stodgy Europhobic viewpoint, and more generally the view that Britain (more commonly England) is inherently separate from (and superior to) the Continent. In this case, "wog" describes any foreign, un-English person.

Related Topics:
Calais - Europhobic - Continent

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