a character from a book, that was black, which then had a series of dolls, and over a period of time became considered politically incorrect, at least thats all i know if that helps.
These days about the only place you hear the word is at a doll show or collectors' club meeting. Debussy wrote a short piece called "Golliwog's Cake Walk." You might research that and perhaps whatever inspired him will give you more information about its origin.
A ragdoll designed to look like a stereotyped male of african descent. It is nowadays considered racist, which it is. Supposedly, it's the root of a later insult directed towards blacks, "wog", as used in the movie Gorillas in the Mist starring Sigourney Weaver.
"Wog" referred to all Asian and North African people whom the British did not perceive as "white," such as Indians, Chinese, and Egyptians. It was not, to my knowledge, ever used for sub-Saharan Africans. However, as I see it--and one does not see it often these days so it's a difficult object of study--it had an undertone of referring to people who had developed their own civilizations, such as the Indians, Chinese, and Egyptians, and not to people who were still in the Neolithic phase of their development. There was a specific resentment toward people who dared to call themselves "civilized" when they did not follow the British model of civilized society so a word was coined for them generically. I don't believe that an Englishman would have called the stone-age people of Skull Island "wogs."
That makes me sad because Wog is Emma's nickname and now that I know its a racial slur i will feel strange calling her that.
