"nigger lover" initially applied to abolitionists, then to white people sympathetic towards Black Americans. The portmanteau word wigger ('White' + 'nigger') denotes a white person emulating "street Black behavior", hoping to gain acceptance to the hip hop, thug, and gangsta sub-cultures. Norman Mailer wrote of the antecedents of this phenomenon in 1957 in his essay The White Negro. The N-word euphemism The euphemism the N-word became mainstream American English usage during the racially contentious O. J. Simpson murder case in 1995. Key prosecution witness Detective Mark Fuhrman, of the Los Angeles Police Department—who denied using racist language on duty—impeached himself with his prolific use of nigger in tape recordings about his police work. The recordings, by screenplay writer Laura McKinney, were from a 1985 research session wherein the detective assisted her with a screenplay about LAPD policewomen. Fuhrman excused his use of the word saying he used nigger in the context of his "bad cop" persona. Media personnel who reported on Fuhrman's testimony substituted the N-word for nigger. Similar-sounding words (Latin for "black") occurs in Latinate scientific nomenclature and is the root word for some homophones of nigger; sellers of niger seed (used as bird feed), sometimes use the spelling Nyjer seed. The classical Latin pronunciation sounds similar to the English , occurring in biologic and anatomic names, such as Hyoscyamus niger (black henbane), and even for animals that are in fact not black, such as Sciurus niger (fox squirrel). is the Latin feminine form of (black), used in biologic and anatomic names such as substantia nigra (black substance). The word niggardly (miserly) is etymologically unrelated to nigger, derived from the Old Norse word (stingy) and the Middle English word . In the US, this word has been misinterpreted as related to nigger and taken as offensive. In January 1999, David Howard, a white Washington, D.C., city employee, was compelled to resign after using niggardly—in a financial context—while speaking with Black colleagues, who took umbrage. After reviewing the misunderstanding, Mayor Anthony A. Williams offered to reinstate Howard to his former position. Howard refused reinstatement but took a job elsewhere in the mayor's government. Denotational extension The denotations of nigger also include non-Black/non-White and other disadvantaged people. Some of these terms are self-chosen, to identify with the oppression and resistance of Black Americans; others are ethnic slurs used by outsiders. Jerry Farber's 1967 essay collection, The Student as Nigger, used the