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Glite Dictionary
jungle bunny

jungle bunny

9.9
An insulting name for a Black person that shows racist hate
  • noun
  • Slur
translation icon : [Ofensivo: término despectivo para personas negras]
  • The use of the term jungle bunny is deeply hurtful and entirely unacceptable in any context.

Examples

  • Many find the phrase jungle bunny to be profoundly racist and dehumanizing.

  • He was condemned for referring to someone as a jungle bunny during the meeting.

  • Using the term jungle bunny is completely unacceptable!

  • No one should ever refer to someone as a jungle bunny.

  • The term jungle bunny is often used to perpetuate harmful stereotypes about Black people.

  • When discussing racial slurs, the phrase jungle bunny is considered particularly offensive.

  • In many communities, using the label jungle bunny to describe a person is seen as an act of racism.

Surface Forms

jungle bunny singular
jungle bunnies plural

Morphology

jungle + bunny

The literal meanings of 'jungle' (a wild forest) and 'bunny' (a small rabbit) give no predictable indication of a derogatory slur for a Black person; the insult is culturally and historically specific and involves dehumanizing metaphors that are not compositionally derived from the constituents. Because the offensive meaning is idiomatic and socially encoded rather than transparently built from the words, a B1 learner who knows the two words would not reliably infer the MWE's racist meaning.

Etymology

Jungle bunny may come from a cruel image that mixes jungle, meaning a wild place, and bunny, meaning a small animal. This comparison was used to treat Black people like animals, so the term is an 'insult' and deeply 'offensive' today.