In the contemporary English language, the nouns Polack or Polak are ethnic slurs, and derogatory references to a person of Polish descent. It is an Anglicisation of the Polishmasculine nounPolak, which denotes a person of Polish ethnicity and unspecified gender. However, the English loanword is considered now an ethnic slur and therefore considered insulting in nearly all contemporary usages.
History
According to Online Etymology Dictionary by Douglas Harper, "Polack" meant as "Polish immigrant, person of Polish descent" was used in American English until the late 19th century to describe a "Polish person" in a non-offensive way. Dictionary.com Unabridged based on the Unabridged Dictionary by Random House claims that the word originated between 1590 and 1600. For example, Shakespeare uses the term Polacks in his tragedy Hamlet to refer to opponents of Hamlet's father. A quote is given below: In an Irish-published edition of Hamlet by the Educational Company, Patrick Murray noted: "Some editors, however, argue that Polacks should read as pole-axe, and that Horatio is remembering an angry Old Hamlet striking the ice with his battle-axe". On 26 July 2008, The Times featured a comment piece by restaurant reviewer and columnist Giles Coren, which contained viewpoints that many Poles considered to be anti-Polish. In a piece, entitled "Two waves of immigration, Poles apart", Coren used the ethnic slur "Polack" to describe Polish immigrants who can "clear off", in reference to Polish immigrants leaving the United Kingdom in response to low-paying construction jobs drying up. He went on to articulate his views about the role of Poles in the Holocaust in occupied Poland, referencing the fact that his great-grandfather had left Poland for the United Kingdom: The piece prompted a letter of complaint to The Times from the Polish ambassador to the UK, Barbara Tuge-Erecińska. She wrote that "the issue of Polish–Jewish relations has been unfairly and deeply falsified" by his "aggressive remarks" and "contempt". Coren's comments caused the Federation of Poles in Great Britain to attempt to demand a published apology from The Times under threat of an official complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, which has the power to force an official apology. After the Press Complaints Commission rejected their complaint because the criticism had been of a group rather than an individual, the Federation of Poles in Great Britain lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.
Ethnonyms
The neutral English language noun for a Polish person today is Pole. In some other languages such as Swedish or Norwegian, polack or polakk are inoffensive terms for a person from Poland. In Iberian languages, polaco is a mild slur for people from Catalonia, though it is a completely neutral way of referencing Polish people in all Ibero-American countries except Brazil, where, much like galego, alemão and russo, it became a politically incorrect term, and the noun used for Polish people is polonês. In Ukrainian, the old exonymлях is now considered offensive and is replaced by the neutral поляк. Another common Russian ethnic slur for Poles is пшек, an onomatopoeia derived from Polish phonology: prepositions prze- and przy- are quite common, with rz corresponding to the sound of "sh", and the sibilant-sounding speech has been a target of mockery in Russian culture.
