Golliwog
noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A rag doll or mascot in the form of a caricature of a black minstrel.
"Lyons was ideal material for the ‘Honest Joe’ image. He had a round chubby face under a mop of curly hair that made him resemble a cross between a koala bear and a golliwog."
- 2 a grotesque black doll wordnet
- 3 A black person. dated, offensive
"Deemed equally ‘harmless’ by its perpetrators is that close relation to the cannibal; the golliwog.[…]Dixon′s brilliant essay ‘All things white and beautiful’ (1976) argues that golliwogs are associated with fear and darkness, quoting an Enid Blyton story of Noddy being trapped and robbed of his car and his clothes, even his ‘dear little hat’ by ‘four big strong golliwogs’. Dixon observes how a four-year-old got the message from the pictures alone, which show the golliwogs driving off and ‘poor little’ Noddy on the ground."
- 4 A hairy caterpillar. Australia
- 5 A receiver of stolen goods.
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- 6 Greyhound racing: the jolly dogs. slang
"But even wooden limbs get tired/ And want a change of play/ So "Golliwogg"/ A "jolly dog"/ Suggests they run away."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Lyons was ideal material for the ‘Honest Joe’ image. He had a round chubby face under a mop of curly hair that made him resemble a cross between a koala bear and a golliwog."
Etymology
Probably a blend of golly + polliwog Coined for the illustrations by Florence Kate Upton for her mother Bertha Upton′s 1895 children′s book, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls — and a ‘Golliwogg’.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.