Entry · catalog no. 6761
bop
/ /bɑp/ /BOP
noun · nationwide · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
A song that hits — catchy, well-made, hard to sit still through. Separately and much older: to move or dance to a rhythm.
“That whole album is nothing but bops.”
Origin & Attribution
Black jazz musicians, 1940s, clipped from bebop — Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Mary Lou Williams, Thelonious Monk. To bop was to move to it. The word stayed in Black speech for seventy years as a verb of motion before resurfacing in the 2010s as a noun for a good record. A second, unrelated use — bop as a slur for a woman judged promiscuous — circulates chiefly in Chicago and Detroit and should not be confused with the musical sense.
1945
Clipped from bebop by Black jazz musicians
1950s
Settles into Black speech as a verb of motion — to bop
2010s
Resurfaces as a noun for a song that hits
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
nationwide · 1940s
Spoken by
Black jazz musicians, then Black speech generally, then the internet
$BOPThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady81 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
80/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1945
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Oxford English Dictionary, entry "bop, n.2" — reference · ongoing
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceGood Black News — "Black Lexicon: The Origins of 'Bop'" — podcast segment · 2022
submitted
See also