denigrate: [16] To denigrate people is literally to ‘blacken’ them. The word comes from Latin dēnigrāre ‘blacken’, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix dē- and niger ‘black’. This adjective, which is of unknown origin, also produced French noir ‘black’ and Italian nero ‘black’, and is the source (via Spanish negro) of English negro [16] and the now taboo nigger [18]. Denigrate originally meant ‘physically turn something black’ as well as the metaphorical ‘defame, belittle’: ‘This lotion will denigrate the hairs of hoary heads’, Richard Tomlinson, Renodaeus’ Medicinal dispensatory 1657. => negro, nigger
