Nigger in the woodpile
Encyclopedia
Figure of speech
A figure of speech is the use of a word or words diverging from its usual meaning. It can also be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it, as in idiom, metaphor, simile,...
formerly commonly used in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and elsewhere. It means "some fact of considerable importance that is not disclosed – something suspicious or wrong".
Origin
Both the 'fence' and 'woodpile' variants developed about the same time in the period of 1840–50 when the Underground RailroadUnderground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
was flourishing. The evidence is slight, but it is presumed that they were derived from actual instances of the concealment of fugitive slaves in their flight north under piles of firewood or within hiding places in stone walls. Another possible origin, comes from the practice of transporting pulpwood
Pulpwood
Pulpwood refers to timber with the principal use of making wood pulp for paper production.-Applications:* Trees raised specifically for pulp production account for 16% of world pulp production, old growth forests 9% and second- and third- and more generation forests account for the balance...
on special rail road cars. In the era of slavery, the pulpwood cars were built with an outer frame with the wood being stacked inside in moderately neat rows and stacks. However, given the nature of the cars, it was possible to smuggle persons in the pile itself; possibly giving rise to the term.
Film
An American film comedy entitled A Nigger in the woodpile was released in 1904.In You Can't Cheat an Honest Man
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man is a comedy film starring and scripted by W. C. Fields.-Production background:Fields plays "Larsen E. Whipsnade", the owner of a shady carnival that is constantly on the run from the law. The whimsical title comes from a line spoken by Fields about ten minutes into...
(1939), W. C. Fields
W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield , better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer...
remarks that there's "evidently a Ubangi in the fuel supply." He makes a similar comment in My Little Chickadee
My Little Chickadee
My Little Chickadee is a Universal comedy/western motion picture starring Mae West and W. C. Fields, with Joseph Calleia, Ruth Donnelly, Margaret Hamilton, Donald Meek, Willard Robertson, Dick Foran, George Moran, William B. Davidson, and Addison Richards. It was directed by Edward F. Cline...
(1940), substituting "Ethiopian" for "Ubangi."
In Not So Dumb
Not So Dumb
Not So Dumb is a comedy motion picture starring Marion Davies, directed by King Vidor, and produced for Cosmopolitan Productions for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.It is based on the stage play Dulcy by George S...
(1930), actress Marion Davies
Marion Davies
Marion Davies was an American film actress. Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, as her high-profile social life often obscured her professional career....
' dim-bulb character says, "I knew there was a woodpile in the nigger."
In Porky's Railroad (1937), a train quickly passes a pile of wood, thus blowing away all the wood and revealing a black man with large white eyes.
Literature
In Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
's They Do It with Mirrors
They Do It with Mirrors
They Do It With Mirrors is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1952 under the title of Murder with Mirrors and in UK by the Collins Crime Club on November 17 in the same year under Christie's original title. The US edition...
, Inspector Curry asks the phrase of Miss Marple
Miss Marple
Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in twenty short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective. She is one of the most famous...
in relation to Gina's white GI husband, Wally. The phrase is uttered by Justice Wargrave in And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...
. In Christie's Dumb Witness
Dumb Witness
Dumb Witness is a detective fiction novel by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on July 5 1937 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year under the title of Poirot Loses a Client...
(copyright 1937), the phrase is the title of Chapter 18 and it is uttered by Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
who also asks if it is a "saying." It is also present in Christie's After the Funeral
After the Funeral
After the Funeral is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in March 1953 under the title of Funerals are Fatal and in UK by the Collins Crime Club on May 18 of the same year under Christie's original title...
, said by George Crossfield to Poirot in reference to a Mr. Entwhistle.
Can be found in W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
's The Razor's Edge
The Razor's Edge
The Razor’s Edge is a book by W. Somerset Maugham published in 1944. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard." taken from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad....
on p. 305 when Gray is talking to author about a new business deal.
"As soon as I get to New York I'll fly down to Texas to give it the once over, and you bet I'll keep my eyes peeled for a nigger in the woodpile before I cough up any of Isabel's dough."
In the original version of The Hardy Boys
The Hardy Boys
The Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional teenage brothers and amateur detectives who appear in various mystery series for children and teens....
The House on the Cliff
The House on the Cliff
The House On The Cliff is the second book in the original The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories published by Grosset & Dunlap. The book ranks 72nd on the Publishers Weekly's All-Time Bestselling Children's Book List in the United States with 1,712,433 copies sold...
, Frank Hardy uses the phrase in chapter 9 in regard to a suspicious circumstance.
Used in some Erle Stanley Gardner
Erle Stanley Gardner
Erle Stanley Gardner was an American lawyer and author of detective stories, best known for the Perry Mason series, he also published under the pseudonyms A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J...
mystery novels.
Used in Paul de Kruif's "Microbe Hunters," original copyright 1926, in the chapter on Leeuwenhoek.
Scientific Literature
In the first footnote of a 1956 article in the Journal of Symbolic Logic, Robin GandyRobin Gandy
Robin Oliver Gandy was a British mathematician and logician.He was a friend, student, and associate of Alan Turing, having been supervised by Turing during his PhD at the University of Cambridge , where they worked together.Educated at Abbotsholme, Robin Gandy took two years of the Mathematical...
notes that Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
always spoke of the axiom of extensionality
Axiom of extensionality
In axiomatic set theory and the branches of logic, mathematics, and computer science that use it, the axiom of extensionality, or axiom of extension, is one of the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory.- Formal statement :...
as being 'the nigger in the woodpile'.
Computer scientist E. W. Dijkstra also used the phrase in a paper, where he wrote, "A main nigger in the woodpile is the invention —in Europe— and the subsequent proliferation —primarily in the USA— of the term 'software engineering'."
From the November 1939 issue of Birth Control Review (Vol XXIV, No. 1), published by the Birth Control Federation of America, Inc., Robert C. Cook, Editor of the Journal of Heredity, comments in his article "Birth Rates in Fascist Countries" that the Italian people, in not throwing themselves headlong into Mussolini's appeal to increase the birthrate, "...seem very sensibly to have detected an Ethiopian in the woodpile somewhere..."
United Kingdom
In the UK in recent years, the occasional use of this phrase by public figures has normally been followed by an apology.- 2007, Bedfordshire County councillor Rhys Goodwin, stepped down as chairman of the environment and economic development committee: "...During a debate on heavy goods vehicle traffic in the county, he wanted to argue that a particular problem in Bedfordshire is the amount of trucks on the roads connected with quarrying. But he used the unfortunate figure of speech before sheepishly rephrasing his point." Goodwin, who was 74 at the time, said: "There was no racist intent at all. For 50 years of my life that was common parlance, with no more a derogatory connotation than the symbol on a jar of marmalade."
- 2008, Lord Dixon Smith, Conservative frontbencher, used the phrase in a debate on the Housing and Regeneration Bill: "Of course, the nigger in the woodpile, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has already pointed out, is that it still incorporates what I call the hangover of the new towns legislation." He immediately apologised to the House. His Lordship, also in his seventies, later commented to journalists that the phrase had been "in common parlance when I was younger".
- 2009, Dick Denby, of Dick Denby Transport uttered this phrase on the BBC Radio 2 Jeremy Vine show (Tuesday, 1 December) during a discussion on the merits of 83 feet (25.3 m) HGVs. He said that perhaps he should not have used said phrase. Jeremy Vine agreed he should not have used it and later apologised to Radio 2 listeners who might have been offended.
Ireland
In November, 2007, in relation to a debate on the Gaelic Players Association, Fine GaelFine Gael
Fine Gael is a centre-right to centrist political party in the Republic of Ireland. It is the single largest party in Ireland in the Oireachtas, in local government, and in terms of Members of the European Parliament. The party has a membership of over 35,000...
Senator Paul Coughlan asked "Can the leader kick it into play and give members an update? Who is the nigger in the woodpile?". There was no call for an apology.
Australia
David Lord, an ABC News Radio presenter was forced to apologise after using the expression. On 22 February 2007, Alan JonesAlan Jones (radio broadcaster)
Alan Belford Jones AO is an Australian radio broadcaster, former rugby union and rugby league coach and administrator.Jones hosts Sydney's most popular breakfast radio program, on radio station 2GB...
, another radio presenter, was heard to use the same phrase. There was no call for an apology.
Footballer agent, Bernie Mandic stated in an interview broadcast on Radio Station SEN 1116
SEN 1116
SEN 1116 , the acronym standing for Sports Entertainment Network, is a commercial AM radio station based in Melbourne, Australia, operating on 1116 kHz...
on 29 June 2011 "I know it's politically incorrect, but I could throw a nigger in the woodpile, what about Brisbane?", regarding the possibility of football player Harry Kewell
Harry Kewell
Harold "Harry" Kewell is an Australian professional football midfielder who plays for Melbourne Victory in the A-League. Internationally he has received 55 caps, and scored 16 goals, while playing for the Australian national team...
playing in Australia for the A-League
A-League
The A-League is the top Australasian professional football league. Run by Australian governing body Football Federation Australia , it was founded in 2004 following the folding of the National Soccer League and staged its inaugural season in 2005–06. It is sponsored by Hyundai Motor Company...
.
United States
On September 18, 2009, the Town Board of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, confirmed that Police Chief Lou Corsi used the phrase during a phone conversation with Under Sheriff John Mahan, and that the conversation had been recorded.On December 6, 2009, Joel Barbee made a reference to it in his cartoon "The Woods Pile".
External links
- Racist parody of Republican platform from 1860 Presidential campaign, in Harper's WeeklyHarper's WeeklyHarper's Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor...
- Epistemology of the Woodpile, University of TorontoUniversity of TorontoThe University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
Quarterly - History News Network blog post about origins of term
- History News Network blog post about a recent controversy
- Phrase used in 1918 advertisement for Patterson Publishing Company The Rotarian magazine