Spook slur

Slang : Extremely Disparaging and Offensive, spook slur. Authorities in Moscow claim to have arrested an American spook wearing wigs and carrying an incriminating letter.

This was not a safety recall; rather, it was what one might call a PR recall. The toy, pictured here, contains little black figurines with orange parachutes packaged under the name "Spook Drop Parachuters. The term "spook" is an ethnic slur for African Americans, albeit one that was less widely used compared to decades past. Yet, for many shoppers of Target stores, the term remains hurtful and incendiary. Naturally, the outcry was swift, and an apology from Target quickly followed.

Spook slur

As temperatures cool down and scary Halloween decor goes up, it seems fitting to call October "spooky" season. However, hurtful connotations associated with the word raise questions of etiquette. During the season of murder mysteries and haunted hayrides, is it insensitive to say that you were spooked? According to NPR, spook comes from the Dutch word for apparition, or specter. The noun was first used in English around the turn of the nineteenth century. From there, the word lived a harmless life, but in World War II, white American soldiers started referring to their Black counterparts as "spooks," Newsweek reports. The Black Army pilots who trained at the Tuskegee Institute were referred to as the "Spookwaffe" — a play on the German air force's Luftwaffe. Sociolinguist Renee Blake told NPR that the word "spook" isn't used too often in modern times, but there are a few recent examples tying it to racial implications. His novel tells the story of a professor at a New England college who is forced to resign after he calls two African-American students spooks. The word spook hasn't just gotten fictional people in trouble. In , Target apologized for selling a Halloween toy called "Spook Drop Parachuters" — literally miniature black figurines with orange parachutes. While it's clear that "spook" has multiple, distinct meanings, Blake told NPR that it's still important to think about context. Is 'spooky' season insensitive?

Retrieved 10 November Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Hong Kong. Used in Indonesia, derived from "maling" Javanese for "thief" and "Malaysia".

With all the skeletons, witch hats and spider webs decorating homes and stores across the nation during Halloween—not to mention the plethora of horror movies widely available during the month of October—it seems fitting to call it "spooky" season. However, there are connotations associated with the word "spooky" that are much more horrifying than the ghosts to which the term usually refers. According to Merriam-Webster , the word "spooky" is defined as, "relating to, resembling or suggesting spooks. Originally, pilots of the Tuskegee Institute—derived of the first Black military aviators in the U. Army Air Corps—were called the "Spookwaffe"—a play on the German term "waffe," which means weapon or gun. When airmen returned from their posts with the nickname, white Americans caught wind of the name and began linking the term "spook" to blackness, thus resulting in the word transitioning into a racial slur and its derogatory use. Author Sam Greenlee did attempt to revive the word's initial definition with his book The Spook Who Sat By the Door, which was later turned into a feature film in

There are cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, bloody handprints on the wall, a frothing potion brewing on the stove. And scary! But is it … spooky? It can refer to a spy. One of our Ask Code Switch readers wrote in to ask about the etiquette of using words like spook and spooky.

Spook slur

Slang : Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. Authorities in Moscow claim to have arrested an American spook wearing wigs and carrying an incriminating letter. A third test will, therefore, further spook nervous allies and create a new sense of vulnerability among Americans. More than with the " spook ," however, was the public mind agitated by other rumors which touched upon "south meadow.

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Aberdeen University Press. Claire, Dana SUNY Press. Hokkien for "red hair" referring to Dutch people from the 17th century and expanded to encompass other Europeans by the 19th century. Today the term is used in Russian propaganda to associate Ukrainian identity with Nazism. Santiago, Chile: LOM. For the river in Belize, see Sibun River. The color white is associated with ghosts in China. The plot follows the fictional story of the first Black CIA agent Lawrence Cook, and the reference of the word "spook" serves as a reference to the fact that he is a spy, although the term is also used in a racially offensive way by those who Lawrence encounters throughout the book and movie. Archived from the original on 2 June Well, at the toy development table, when charged with the task of coming up with Halloween-themed toys, the Scooby-doo meaning of spook is much more likely to come to mind and be used to guide decisions than the terms' pejorative interpretation. Vice Indonesia.

OED finds "No certain cognates.

During the season of murder mysteries and haunted hayrides, is it insensitive to say that you were spooked? Retrieved 4 June Pakistanis , other South Asians , and sometimes Middle Eastern people. The Daily Telegraph. My colleague Jennifer Chatman at Berkeley has a fantastic essay called "Overcoming prejudice in the workplace " in our new anthology, "Are We Born Racist? In other projects. Sternberg, Larry. Retrieved 4 January Thailand: Buddhism, Society, and Women. Possibly derived from the Italian word Baciccia , a nickname for Giambattista. Ukraine , Belarus. Bolivian people , Peruvian people. One can marshal evidence from cognitive science in favor of the former argument, in fact.