jive talk
Hep cat speak
Jive talk is the slang and verbal style associated with African American jazz culture from the 1930s and 1940s.
It featured playful coinages, ironic reversals, and rhythmic wordplay: That cat can really blow.
The style influenced later slang and was both celebrated as creative expression and sometimes mocked in exaggerated imitation.
- swingSuspended recreational seat
- big band era1930s-40s jazz orchestra heyday
- slangInformal in-group vocabulary
- jazzImprovisational American music genre
- double entendrePhrase with hidden lewdness
Harlem Renaissance · bebop · jazz age · rhyming slang · code-switching · scat singing · call and response · argot · colloquialism · zoot suit · hepcat · idiom · identity · subculture · patois · vernacular · Cab Calloway · wordplay
- BlaxploitationFoxy Brown, Pam Grier, Slaughter, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield
jive talkstraight talk
Honest, direct communication
Standard English · King's English · Queen's English · proper English · formal speech
jive, talk, jives, jived, jiving, talks, talked, talking, talker