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The origins of the term are unclear. Many dictionaries propose that it comes from the term golliwog (or golliwogg), a blackfaced doll with tangled hair introduced by Florence Upton in her book The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls, in which a black doll named Golliwog is featured. Others have suggested that it originated from acronyms for "Worthy Oriental Gentleman" or variants thereof. Those explanations, like other attempts to find the origin of words such as "cop" or "tip" in their supposed etymologies, are probably mistaken. The use of the word is very much discouraged in Britain these days and most dictionaries refer to the word with the justified caution that it is slang and derogatory. James Robertson & Sons, a British manufacturer of jams and preserves, discontinued using the Golliwog as its trademark in the early 1990s for similar reasons. If shouted at someone in the street the usage is generally derogatory. If used in some portions of society in casual conversation its intent may sometimes be so unspecific as to represent nothing more than a non-derogatory "not us" identifier. It would be unwise to use it in polite company.
Wog is also a derogatory slang term in Australian English, directed against people of Southern European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ancestry, specificially Italians and Greeks, but also those of Spanish, Croatian (Balkans), Portuguese, Maltese, Arab, TurkishTurkey (officially the Republic of Turkey Turkish Turkiye is a country located in Southwest Asia with a small part in southeastern Europe. Until 1922 the country was the center of the Ottoman Empire. The Anatolian peninsula, between the Black Sea and the and IranIran ( Persian: ) is a Middle Eastern country located in southwestern Asia that until 1935 was referred to in the West as Persia''. It borders Pakistan (909km of border) and Afghanistan (936km) to the east, Turkmenistan (1000km) to the northeast, the Caspi descent. It also often includes Latin Americans grouped together with those of Spanish ancestry.
It occasionally extends to people from other parts of EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Se or the LevantThe Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in Southwest Asia south of the Taurus Mountains, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and in the east, the north Arabian Desert and Mesopotamia. The Levant does n. Migrants from the NetherlandsDutch redirects here. For other uses, see Dutch (disambiguation). The Netherlands ( Dutch: Nederland is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a constitutional monarchy. It is located in northwestern Europe and borders the North Sea, Belgium sometimes refer to themselves as clog wogs.
This meaning came into use in the 1950s when Australia accepted large numbers of immigrants from Southern Europe. Some contemporary Australian comedians of Italian and Greek cultures have attempted to reclaim the use of the word, and the term does not remain heavily loaded in Australian culture.