Talk:swamp nigger

RFD discussion: August–October 2022

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swamp nigger

Currently tagged {{rfdef|en}} because various likely(?) definitions failed RFV yet for some reason this did not lead to the usual outcome of deleting the entry. Many, possibly all, of the citations now present just seem to be clarifying that the nigger in question came from or was in a swamp, like google books:"backwoods niggers" or google books:"city niggers" or what have you. If there aren't enough citations to write a non-SOP definition, why are the citations in the mainspace and not on the Citations: page? - -sche (discuss) 01:52, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

(Possibly some of the cites may indeed be about ones who are in swamps due to being runaway slaves, but assuming this makes the phrase idiomatically mean "runaway slave", as the term was defined at various points in its edit history, is debatable, e.g. "shot in the leg by a runaway swamp nigger" would make no sense if "swamp nigger" itself already meant "runaway".) - -sche (discuss) 03:25, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

@-sche: While in general I agree with this line of thinking, it is in and of itself not 100% conclusive in my opinion. To give an adjacent example, there's plenty of hits for google books:"black nigger" but I would still claim that nigger is therein used in sense 1 (giving rise to the same type of pleonasm). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:55, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete. SOP as is. AG202 (talk) 03:11, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete. Binarystep (talk) 04:17, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Because @Fytcha clearly doesn't believe it failed RFV, given there's a commented-out note that says defs before "failing" RFV: 1) runaway black slave 2) native American; can only be recreated with 3 matching quotes. Theknightwho (talk) 23:01, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: Yes, because it was neither tagged with {{rfv}} nor listed on WT:RFVE, but deleted nonetheless for being unverified. As the term yields hundreds of hits on Google Books, I restored the entry and added some citations that make some sense but removed the definitions because I felt like most citations didn't fit either sense well (I wasn't always sure honestly, though on a second reading now, some, such as the 1965 one, clearly belong to the SOP sense, not either of the previous idiomatic senses). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:55, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

As it currently stands, move the cites to the citations page and delete. I am not seeing anything here which clearly demonstrates that it is not SOP. - TheDaveRoss 12:36, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

RFV issue. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:55, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

It can't be an RFV issue if there's no definition and there are cites already... AG202 (talk) 12:51, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Sorting out which cites convey which meaning is a matter of RFV. Conversely, I'd claim that it can't be an RFD issue because RFD is a mechanism by which the recreation of a sense is prevented, which doesn't apply if there aren't any senses. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:53, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

• Deleted - actually moved to citations namespace and reformatted accordingly - TheDaveRoss 13:46, 7 October 2022 (UTC)