Nigger  In the English language, the word nigger is an ethnic slur typically directed at black people, especially African Americans. The word originated in the 18th century as an adaptation of the Spanish "negro", a descendant of the Latin adjective "niger", which means black. It was used derogatorily, and by the mid-20th century, particularly in the United States, its usage by anyone other than a black person had become unambiguously pejorative, a racist insult. Accordingly, it began to disappear from general popular culture. Its inclusion in classic works of literature has sparked modern controversy. Because the term is considered extremely offensive, it is often referred to by the euphemism the N-word. However, it remains in use, particularly as the variant "nigga", by African Americans among themselves. In dialects of English that have non-rhotic speech, "nigger" and "nigga" are pronounced the same. The variants "neger" and "negar" derive from various European languages' words for 'black', including the Spanish and Portuguese word (black) and the now-pejorative French "nègre". Etymologically, "negro", "noir", "nègre", and "nigger" ultimately derive from "nigrum", the stem of the Latin ('black'), pronounced , with a trilled "r". In every grammatical case, grammatical gender, and grammatical number besides nominative masculine singular, is "nigr-" followed by a case ending. In its original English-language usage, "nigger" (then spelled "niger") was a word for a dark-skinned individual. The earliest known published use of the term dates from 1574, in a work alluding to "the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witnes." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first derogatory usage of the term "nigger" was recorded two centuries later, in 1775. In the colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used "negars" in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony. Later American English spellings, "neger" and "neggar", prevailed in a northern colony, New York under the Dutch, and in metropolitan Philadelphia's Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities; the African Burial Ground in New York City originally was known by the Dutch name "Begraafplaats van de Neger" (Cemetery of the Negro); an early occurrence of "neger" in Rhode Island dates from 1625.