Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a fool, a simpleton.

1721, 1726		N. Amhurst Terræ-Filius (2004) No. XXXV 270: Surprized, no doubt, to find a place, which he had heard so much renown’d for learning, filled with such grey-headed novices and reverend hottentots.
1754		E. Burt Letters from Scotland I 151: When Persons of Fortune will suffer their Houses to be worse than Hog-styes, I do not see how they differ in that Particular from Hottentots.
1774		C. Dibdon Waterman in Coll. Farces & Entertainment VI (1788) 96: Mrs Bundle: Low creature! [...] The Hottentot!
1836		A. Thornton Don Juan in London II 17: Keep at a distance, or I shall take you for a plough-boy in girl’s clothes – Hottentot!
1852		F.E. Smedley Lewis Arundel 118: Oh, if you are positively such a Hottentot as to dislike it.
1890		Dundee Courier 19 Feb. 2/1: Got a cheapjack Hottentot / To sell the whole herd on the spot.
1898		Binstead & Wells Pink ’Un and Pelican 158: It is quite an old-world place, to which the average exile has not penetrated, nor the Saturday-to-Monday steamboat Hottentot found his way.

2. (S.Afr.) a derog. term for a black person; also adj.

1688		G. Tachard Voyage to Siam performed by Six Jesuits 68: The Europeans call these people Hottentots, perhaps because they always have that word in their mouth when they meet strangers.
1711		N. Ward Vulgus Britannicus III 43: So Hodmantots, because their Feasts, / Chiefly consist of Guts of Beasts.
1718		M. Prior Alma in Works (1959) III 496: Your nicer Hottentotes think meet With Guts and Tripe to deck their Feet.
1754		T. Sheridan Brave Irishman I ii: Get you gone, Sir – go about your business – go to your own hottentot country.
1759		O. Goldsmith Citizen of the World II lxxv 57: A travelling Hottentot himself would be silent .
1764		Caledonian Mercury 7 Nov. 1/1: I expect to see my poor neighbours as naked as Hottenots.
1771		P. Parsons New Newmarket I 114: What Hottentots!
1781		Hicky’s Bengal Gaz. 8-15 Sept. n.p.: No matter whether by a Mogul from the East or a Hottentot from the West.
1785		L. Macnally Fashionable Levities I i: Though ignorant as a Hottentot, he has got himself rank’d among the literati.
1793		J.B. Moreton West India Customs and Manners 113: Even their poor faithful slaves [...] whose calibashes they often assisted to drain, when full of high-seasoned pepperpot, are become filthy brutes or hottentots to them.
1806–7		J. Beresford Miseries of Human Life (1826) 212: Sitting for hours before a smoky chimney, like a Hottentot in a kraal.
1810		Morn. Post (London) 9 Nov. 3/3: I give slap of face; she come back, get up, and say, ‘I rise blow you up, you dam Hottentot’.
1822		Westmorland Gaz. 16 Mar. 4/3: Two Hottentots [...] were vociferating, as if in a rage.
1836		A. Thornton Don Juan in London II 257: That fellow in the ragged breeches, with his hair matted like a Hottentot.
1841		C.J. Lever Charles O’Malley 221: ‘Such an ungainly savage I never met,’ I would say. To which he would reply, ‘Bad enough he is certainly; but, by Jove! when I think of your Hottentot, I feel grateful for what I’ve got.’.
1848		Thackeray Vanity Fair I 306: Marry that mulatto woman? [...] I don’t like the colour, Sir. Ask the black that sweeps opposite Fleet Market, Sir. I’m not going to marry a Hottentot Venus.
1850		Gallipolis Jrnl (OH) 28 Nov. 1/2: That talk was of Hottentots —‘Don’t speak of ’em,’ cried Miss Angelina Daffy [...] ‘If I were only to look at a Hottentot, I should faint’.
1872		Wkly Caucasian (Lexington, MO) 8 June 1/2: The difference between [...] a beastly hottentot, [...] a pomposity-stuffed Johnny Bully and a missionary-broiled Timbuctoodle.
1886		Aberdeen Jrnl 3 July 8/2: I should think that you would be so ashamed that you would sink into the earth, and come out on the other side among the Hottentots with whom you belong, you gutter snipe. Git!
1905		Sporting Times 25 Mar. 13/4: Especially among the Hottentots and Bastards, a generation has sprung up which shows all too plainly that the dusky husbands had far less to do with the matter than they should have had. The natural result is that these all too fair children are frequently nicknamed ‘Soldaat’ (soldier) or ‘Tommy’.
1908		D. Blackburn Leaven 255: His fame rested principally on that faith-testing story, ‘The Regenerated Hottentot’.
1913		C. Pettman Africanderisms 217: Hotnot A common Dutch pronunciation of Hottentot.
1914		R. Tressell Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1955) 586: Can’t you see that these people [...] are for the most part – intellectually – on a level with Hottentots?
1929		N. Devitt Legal Atmospherics 81: The big white baases at the Cape say that you hottentots are such dreadful liars that they cannot believe a word you say.
1943		‘John Burger’ Black Man’s Burden 194: An English missionary ‘went Hottentot’; but the number of Europeans who would do this to-day is negligible.
1956		D. Jacobson Dance in the Sun 72: Bushman, Hottentot, they’re all the same. Little yellow devils.
1962		A. La Guma Walk in the Night (1968) 39: Let these hottentots kill each other off for all I care.
1977		R. Coover Public Burning (1979) 437: They’re really piling in now [...] of all creeds and colors, and sexes, shoulder to shoulder, butt to butt, missionaries squeezed up with mafiosas, hepcats with hottentots, pollyannas with press agents and plumbers and panty raiders.
1983		I.L. Allen Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 48: Allusions to African Origins: hottentot.
1990		R. Gool Cape Town Coolie 97: ‘Give for mevrou one from that hottentot,’ the fisherman said.
1999		IOL News (Western Cape) 17 Nov. 🌐 Captain de Beer told a colleague he was a ‘donnerse Hotnot’ [...] (a damned Hottentot).
2010		IOL News (Western Cape) 30 Apr. 🌐 H****t and Hottentot-related names will also be changed to something more politically correct.

3. used in the East End of London to denote a stranger; thus cry Hottentots! strangers coming!

1880		G.R. Sims Three Brass Balls 182: Solomon Smith himself is chairman of the Society for Promoting Early Closing among the Hottentots.
1883		G.R. Sims How the Poor Live 84: The cry of ‘Hottentots’ went round. ‘Hottentots’ is the playful way in this district of designating a stranger, that is to say, a stranger come from the West.

4. in pl., the buttocks [the nakedness of African tribespeople].

1986–7

Maledicta IX 52: Hottentots n [D] Buttocks; from the nakedness of these African natives.