Entry · catalog no. 1318
battle-hammed
/ /ˈbætl̩ˌhæmd/ /BAT-ul-hamd
adjective · Black American, chiefly Southern; recorded in colonial newspapers, in country blues, and in Hurston's Harlem glossary · 1720s
✓ Verified
1.
Badly formed about the hips; in the wider record, legs deformed in some way — knock-kneed of people, cow-hocked of horses — and in later Black usage a combination of broad hips and knock knees.
“Zora Neale Hurston put it in her glossary exactly so: battle-hammed, badly formed about the hips.”
2.
In related forms — battle hams, battle-ham hips, battle-kneed.
“She got big thick lips, she got battle-ham hips.”
Origin & Attribution
This is a relic word of great age that survived into twentieth-century Black speech, and the framing it invites is the one to refuse. It is not a Harlem Renaissance coinage and it is not Hurston's. Its earliest American attestations are in colonial runaway advertisements describing the bodies of enslaved and indentured people — a New England paper in 1727, a Maryland ad in 1773 — and there is eighteenth-century British and equine use behind that, where cat or battle hams was said to look mean on a horse. When Hurston printed it in her 1942 Harlem slang glossary she was recording a word already more than two centuries old in American print. She was the folklorist, not the inventor. The Dictionary of American Regional English marks it now chiefly among Black speakers, relic. Neither the British layer nor the Black vernacular life should be used to deny the other: the word came from elsewhere and it is Black speech, and both are true.
1727
A New-England Weekly Journal runaway advertisement of September 11 describes a young Black man as battle-ham'd — the first American print attestation
1928
William Moore's "Tillie Lee" carries battle-ham hips into recorded Black music
1942
Hurston's glossary to "Story in Harlem Slang" prints it in The American Mercury, and it appears again in Dust Tracks on a Road
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Black American, chiefly Southern; recorded in colonial newspapers, in country blues, and in Hurston's Harlem glossary · 1720s
Spoken by
Black Southerners; by the 1960s a word the oldest speakers still had and the youngest did not
$BATTLEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Dormant299 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
18/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1727
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Zora Neale Hurston — glossary to "Story in Harlem Slang," The American Mercury 55 — magazine · Jul 1942
p. 94: Battle-hammed — badly formed about the hips. The story ran with illustrations by Al Hirschfeld; the glossary is reprinted in the Library of America volume
■
New-England Weekly Journal — runaway advertisement · 11 Sep 1727
Describes a young Black man-servant as having thick Lips, battle-ham'd, and going something waddling — the earliest American attestation
■
William Moore — "Tillie Lee" — recording · 1928
She got big thick lips, she got battle-ham hips — the word in Black recorded music
■
+ Cite a sourceDictionary of American Regional English — reference
Entry battle hams, formerly headed battle-hammed; etymology unknown, attested also in eighteenth-century English sources; labeled now chiefly among Black speakers, relic. Last field attestation 1968
See also