Wop

Wop is a pejorative slur used to describe Italians or people of Italian descent.

According to Merriam-Webster, its first known use was in the United States in 1908. The dictionary is unambiguous that it originates from a Southern Italian dialect term guappo, meaning thug, pimp, or swaggerer, derived from the Spanish term guapo, meaning handsome, via dialectical French, meaning ruffian or pimp. It also has roots in the Latin vappa, meaning wine gone flat.

In Neapolitan language and other Southern Italian languages, guappo is pronounced as wah-po. As Southern Italian dialects often feature unaspirated stops or "swallow" the final vowels in a word, guappo would often sound closer to wahpp to American or Anglo ears. Guappo historically refers to a type of flashy, boisterous, swaggering, dandy-like criminal in the Naples area, portrayed as free-spirited yet often violent and taking part in criminal enterprises such as extortion, usury, and procuring. The word eventually became associated with members of the Camorra and has often been used in the Naples area as a friendly or humorous term of address among men. The word likely transformed into the slur "wop" following the arrival of Southern Italian immigrants into the United States. Southern Italian immigrant males would often refer to one another as "guappo" in a jocular or playful manner; as these Southern Italian immigrants often worked as manual laborers in the United States, their native-born American employers and fellow laborers took notice of the Italians' playful term of address and eventually began deploying it as a derogatory term for all Italians. The term "guappo" was especially used by older Southern Italian immigrant males to refer to the younger Southern Italian male immigrants arriving in America.

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