English Language Learners Definition of wop. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something along the way. Love words? Need even more definitions? Just between us: it's complicated. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. Arrowson has got every Dago, and Greaser, and nigger against me. Of course, I was also worried that my fellow Italian-Americans would find it offensive if I had used wop in my title, so I was inclined to discard it anyway.
Why do some people find wop and dago offensive? It all has to do with the disparaging way these words have been used in the past. They were spoken as insults, and people got the idea and were justifiably insulted. In the same way, African-Americans now avoid the word Negro which means black in Spanish and, of course, its even more degrading derivations.
Some Irish-Americans now say that being called a Paddy in America is an insult, even though it is common for the Irish in Ireland to use that term in describing themselves. If the word is used as an insult in some contexts, it comes to be seen as demeaning in most contexts. I was fortunate enough to grow up in an age and community where it was considered cool to be Italian, thanks to famous singers, celebrities, politicians and sports stars of Italian origin.
Most of my non-Italian friends had never even heard the terms wop or dago, so for those of us with Italian blood, these were words spoken with a smidgen of pride, showing that we belonged to a special ethnic group. And we did, of course, and indeed still do. Read more here:. More nicknames and disparaging words.
PriscillaFaith October 27, at PM. Tayphad May 8, at AM. Unknown October 3, at PM. Unknown December 18, at PM. Unknown November 28, at AM. Unknown January 17, at PM. These would-be immigrants were rounded up by U. Also in , the syndicated columnist Hy Gardner shared yet another folk etymology for wop. Acronyms became popular only in the midth century think radar , scuba , and laser , well after the time that wop and other words with supposed acronymic roots came into the language. It helps them draw a handy parallel between undocumented immigrants of the past and present, in order to further their political goals.
But etymology—like politics—is in reality much messier, subverting such tidy explanations. From the online etymological dictionary one of my favorite sites :.
It is probably not an acronym , and the usual story that it is one seems to date only to c. Pejorative name for an Italian. From the Italian, south-of-Rome dialect, guappo, dude. Introduced into America c. It was never that but a rather jovial exclamation when a man showed up in his flashiest Sunday best: che guappo! What a dude! The commonly offered derivation W ith O ut P apers , with reference to immigrants at Ellis Island is nonsense.
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