''Wog'' is a shortened version of the word ''[[polliwogpollywog]]'' (frequently modified with the word ''slimy''), used for sailors during the [[Line-crossing ceremony]] on the first time they cross the [[equator]]. ''PolliwogPollywog'' or ''pollywogpolliwog'' is an increasingly obsolete synonym for [[tadpole]] which has been traced back to Middle English.
This use of polliwogpollywog goes back to at least the 19th century and thus may be the oldest source of ''wog''. Dictionaries are unaware of it, possibly because [[Eric Partridge]] missed it in his ''Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937)''.
Maritime ''wog'' is a possible alternative ancestor of the racial ''wog'', particularly since Partridge does record a usage for presumably annoying Bengali bureaucrats:
