What are the earliest documented uses of the slur now spelled nigger in English literature and records?
Executive summary
The word now spelled “nigger” entered English as a descriptive term in the late 16th century; the earliest published attestation commonly cited is 1574 in a phrase about “the Nigers of Aethiop” [1] [2]. Scholarly dictionaries and historical surveys record that its derogatory, pejorative sense appears later — the OED is commonly cited as documenting the first explicitly derogatory usage in the late 18th century (around 1775–1786 in different sources) while historians trace its degeneration into an overt slur by the mid-19th century [2] [3].
1. Early documentary footprint: the 1574 citation and what it means
The frequently cited “earliest known published use” is a 1574 reference alluding to “the Nigers of Aethiop” — a descriptive, Latin-derived form used to mark dark skin rather than a slur per se [1] [2]. Multiple encyclopedia-style entries repeat that 1574 attestation as the first printed instance; they treat it as evidence that the lexeme entered English by the late 1500s via Iberian forms like negro from Latin niger [1] [2] [4].
2. From descriptor to insult: when did it become pejorative?
Scholars and reference works distinguish neutral descriptive uses from explicitly derogatory ones. The Oxford English Dictionary and derivative summaries place the earliest recorded derogatory sense in the late 18th century — sources cite dates around 1775 and note OED citations circa 1786 — and historians say the word “degenerated into an overt slur” by the mid-19th century [2] [3]. Contemporary overviews therefore treat the shift as a gradual semantic change across the 18th and early 19th centuries rather than a single turning point [2].
3. Documentary evidence before the 19th century: printed and theatrical traces
Available reporting finds examples of the word in eighteenth-century printed and theatrical culture earlier than many expect. Some blackface literary productions and mock “letters” in colonial newspapers from the 1700s used forms of the term to imitate Black speech or caricature enslaved people — scholars point to instances in the mid-1700s (for example, reprinted “Toby” letters in 1747) that insert the term into imagined African-American voices, indicating that usage predated the 19th century and had layered social meanings [5] [6]. These examples complicate a simple neutral→pejorative timeline because they show the word operating in contexts of mockery and ventriloquy before it is uniformly catalogued as a slur [5] [6].
4. Regional spellings and spoken forms: niggur, neger, nigga
Histories document many orthographic and phonetic variants — neger, niggor, niggur and later the dialectal nigga — arising from adaptation of negro/niger and regional pronunciations. Niggur and similar spellings turn up in early 19th‑century North American records (fur-trade documents, informal writing) and the variant nigga later becomes an African American Vernacular English form with different pragmatic uses inside and outside the community [1] [7] [8]. Sources emphasize that the modern intragroup variant’s social meaning is distinct and contested, even as it derives from the same historical root [7] [6].
5. Scholarly consensus and disputes: what historians agree on and where sources differ
There is consensus on three broad points: the word ultimately derives from Latin niger via Spanish/Portuguese negro; it appears in English by the late 16th century; and its meaning shifted toward overt derogation by the 18th–19th centuries [2] [4] [9]. Disagreements in reporting are mostly about dates for the earliest derogatory attestations — OED-based dates vary in secondary accounts (c.1775 vs. c.1786) — and about how to interpret earlier mock‑dialect uses (some see appropriation and labor-category meanings; others stress performance-driven caricature) [2] [6] [5].
6. What the sources do not settle
Available sources do not provide a single, unambiguous “first ever” utterance in speech (oral usage predates print and is not recoverable via these citations), nor do they identify a single author or document that transformed the word into an unambiguous slur at one moment (not found in current reporting). Sources emphasize gradual semantics and the limits of the printed record for reconstructing spoken usage [2] [5].
7. Why this history matters now
Contemporary dictionaries and scholars treat the word as “one of the most controversial” and the “most offensive” racial slur in English, reflecting both its historical trajectory and its ongoing social force; modern debates about literature, pedagogy, and reclamation explicitly rest on the record of how the term evolved [2] [10] [11]. Understanding that the lexeme began as a descriptor in print, then acquired layered meanings in mockery, labor discourse, and violent dehumanization across two centuries, helps explain why the word carries exceptional moral and cultural weight today [2] [6].
If you’d like, I can pull the specific 1574 source citation and the OED citation trails referenced in these summaries so you can see the exact printed lines and OED entries (sources cited above).