The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #100788 Message #2025650
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
14-Apr-07 - 11:17 PM
Thread Name: BS: 'nappy headed hos' what does it mean?
Subject: RE: BS: 'nappy headed hos' what does it mean?
The word 'nappy' for tight, curly or 'kinky' hair may have originated with "black' people. Its seems to have come to notice in mid-20th c. The first quotation is 1943, from "Dictionary of American Regional English," by Cassidy, seems to be in Black dialect, but I don't have that reference- I found it in Lighter.
Azizi, you may have more information.
Possible origin- the old word nappig, meaning woolly, or with a 'nap', a hairy or downy surface on cloth, leather, etc.
'Kinky,' with reference to tightly curly hair, seems to have originated with the blackface minstrels.
Nappie, napkin, is 'a whole nother' complex, which has been gone into in other threads. Oxbridge (OED) upper class English and American usage departs from common UK English on its use. The OED classes use of serviette for table napkin as 'vulgar' usage (unnecessary use of foreign words).
How napkins got tangled up with diapers and menstrual absorbents is something I have no wish to discuss.