What does “beat it out” mean?

Swing-era jive: play it hot, drive the rhythm hard.

Entry · catalog no. 7466

beat it out

/ /bit ɪt aʊt/ /BEET it owt

verb phrase · Harlem, New York · 1930s

✓ Verified

To play music hot and hard, leaning into the rhythm; to emphasize. A bandleader's charge to the section to dig in.

“Cab pointed at the brass to beat it out and the floor came alive.”

Origin & Attribution

Harlem's Black swing bandstands of the 1930s. Documented in Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary (1938) as the working term for playing with heat and emphasis.

1938

Cab Calloway defines beat it out — play it hot, emphasize — in his Hepster's Dictionary

1944

Kept through the final edition of the glossary

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide

Harlem, New York · 1930s

Spoken by

Harlem jazz and swing musicians

$BEATITThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Historical

88 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

15/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1938

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.

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Memphis, TN

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Citations & Sources

■

Cab Calloway, Hepster's Dictionary: Language of Jive

1938

■

The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary

1944

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