wop, n.¹ — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

wop n.¹

[Sp. guapo, a dandy, which was taken up in Sicily during an occupation by Spain and thus imported to the US by 19C immigrants; note Torres, After Hours (1979): ‘Plenty of the guapi (pretty ones), Neapolitan and Sicilian, around in those days. But they wasn’t all pretty, at least to the Irish, who tagged them “wops”’; note Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather (2001): ‘The probable root of “wop” is the Latin uappu, which was used literally to describe wine gone bad, but which was also used figuratively as early as the first century B.C., by Horace, to describe a good-for-nothing, a worthless character. From uappu came the Sicilian vappu and guappu, which connoted arrogance, bluster, and maleficence entwined. It was these Sicilian words that were commonly used to describe the work-bosses who lured their greenhorn paesani into servitude in New York City in the early years of the twentieth century. In New York and other American seaports, the lowly labor of the Italian immigrants’ servitude – the dockside toil and offal-hauling that others shunned came to be called, after the work-bosses, guappu work; and eventually the laborer himself, and not the boss, was known as guappu. The peasant immigrants’ tendency to clip the final vowels from standard Italian and Sicilian [...] rendered guappu as guapp’, which was pronounced, more or less, as wop’]

1. (also wap, woppo) a derog. term for an Italian; thus wopalina, an Italian girl or woman.

1907		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 88: I’d bet two bits on that black wop if I wasn’t saving up for a new hat.
1912		A. Train Courts, Criminals & the Camorra 231: They are known by the euphonious name of ‘Waps’ or ‘Jacks’. These are young Italian-Americans.
1913		H.G. van Campen ‘Life on Broadway’ in McClures Mag. Aug. 198/1: ‘Oh, heavens, dearie! do you s’pose that jealous wop will set the Black Hand on Abie?’.
1915		S. Ford Shorty McCabe on the Job 204: And such a bunch! Waps, Dagoes, Matzers, Syrians, all varieties.
1916		A. Stringer Door of Dread 113: A he-butler that looks like a missin’ link and then finished off by that pink-gilled wop wit’ the meat-carver fresco-work all over his map!
1916		J. Lait ‘Canada Kid’ Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 170: He saw, slimly wending his way through the curling crowd, Hugo the Wop.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 43: A couple of Boston wops who it seemed hadn’t done any- thing in the world but kill a special officer.
1922		F.S. Fitzgerald ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ in Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald V (1963) 65: I can speak Italian! My mother was a wop.
1932		(con. 1917–19) Dos Passos Nineteen Nineteen in USA (1966) 690: Funniest thing he’d ever heard of a kike walking out with a lot of wops.
1940		A.P. Herbert Let Us Be Glum (1941) 2: How is the Top Wop to-day? [...] Is Signor Gayda just as gay?
1947		N. Algren Neon Wilderness (1986) 68: Her people didn’t trust wops.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 147: Italians were among the first settlers in this part of the country, the slur ‘wop’ being an abbreviation of Western Pacific, which brought Sicilian immigrants over to lay rails.
1963		B. Sorkin Steel Shivs 5: I’ll shiv you in. You dirty wop, you.
1965		L. Bruce How to Talk Dirty 145: Hey, woppo, what’s happening?
1968		K. Brasselle Cannibals 271: Maybe your wopalina should have married a good Jewish doctor.
1969		N. Spinrad Bug Jack Barron 17: Vince, you smart-ass wop.
1976		in Woodward & Bernstein The Final Days 170: On two of the tapes the President had made disparaging remarks about Jews and had called Judge Sirica a ‘wop.’.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 30: When she’s got the wop sewed up, she’ll give me the boot.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 54: The good-looking wop is Johnny Stompanato.
2007		C. Goffard Snitch Jacket 17: Wops got the God racket [...] but you stole it from the Heebs.
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook] Anyway [...] the wops won’t be beating up any deadbeat ditzunes out on Lenox.

2. (US) a peasant, a country-dweller; also attrib.

1908

K. McGaffey Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. vi: If you want anything known in one of those wop burgs, just tell it to the butcher.

3. (US) a manual labourer.

1911		Wash. Post 10 Dec. 4/5: The ‘wop’ is a common labourer. The wop used to be the ‘bohunk,’ a sort of generic name for all laborers who had difficulty in speaking English.
1913		J. London John Barleycorn (1989) 143: I was trying to get work as a wop, lumper, and roustabout.

4. any non-specific foreigner.

1914		Day Book (Chicago) 26 May 13/2: ‘Did you ever hear about a man named Lord Cowdray?’ ‘No,’ said the sentry. [...] ‘How would I be knowing one of those foreign wops with handles to their names?’.
1914		Jackson & Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Sl. 88: wop [...] Used principally in the east. An ignorant person; a foreigner; an impossible character... Example: ‘You couldn’t find a jitney with a search warrant in this bunch of wops.’.
1930		E.H. Lavine Third Degree (1931) 82: Wop, go over to that basin and wash up a bit.
1941		F. Swados House of Fury (1959) 10: Aw, she’s only a wop.

5. the Italian language.

1913–14		Van Loan ‘Scrap Iron’ in Taking the Count 205: He could ‘read newspapers [...] in wop and American.’.
1925		S. Lewis Arrowsmith 188: He’ll learn to chatter Wop and French.
1931		D. Runyon ‘Blood Pressure’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 87: The wop [...] cussing us in wop for all I know.
1936		K. Mackenzie Living Rough 117: The songs are sung in every language, in Bohunk, in Wop, in Chink, in Spick.
1982		A. Melville-Ross HMS Trigger 225: There’s a lot of chat in Wop which I doesn’t understand [OED].

In derivatives

Wopland (n.)

Italy.

1927		(con. WW1) P. MacDonald Patrol 41: ‘Topper [...] what’s the dick like out in Wopland?’ [...] ‘What about the skirt?’.
1956		P. Larkin letter 26 Apr. in Thwaite Sel. Letters (1992) 260: What d’you think of Liz J. getting 400 nicker to go and get stuffed in Wopland.

In phrases

work like a wop (v.) [var. on work like a nigger under work v.]

(US black) to work very hard.

1928

C. McKay Home to Harlem 303: Ef he kain make me fall the real way, I guess I’d work like a wop for him.

wop n.1

In derivatives

In phrases

wop n.¹