Entry · catalog no. 8302
breaking
/ /ˈbɹeɪkɪŋ/ /BRAY-king
noun · New York City · 1970s
✓ Verified
1.
The street dance that grew out of Bronx hip hop parties in the 1970s, performed by b-boys and b-girls to the break of a record. It is made of toprock, downrock footwork, freezes and power moves such as spins. People inside the culture call it breaking or b-boying; breakdancing is the name the press gave it.
“He's been breaking since he was twelve and still winces when somebody says breakdancing.”
Origin & Attribution
Born among African American and Puerto Rican youth in the Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s, around the parties DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) threw, including the back-to-school party of August 11, 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, now called the birthplace of hip hop. Kool Herc has said in the documentary The Freshest Kids that the word comes from the slang of reaching a breaking point, not from the drum break, though the origin of the name is debated. The mainstream name breakdancing came through media commercialization in the early 1980s, after Flashdance (1982), Style Wars (1983) and Wild Style (1983). Practitioners prefer breaking or b-boying.
1973
Kool Herc's back-to-school party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx
1983
Flashdance, Style Wars and Wild Style carry the dance to a mass audience
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
New York City · 1970s
Spoken by
Bronx b-boys and b-girls, and the global breaking community
$BREAKIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady10 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1973
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1983
search interest spikes
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
■
Style Wars, PBS documentary (1983)
1983
■
Wild Style, film (1983)
1983
■
Jeff Chang, Can''t Stop Won''t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (St. Martin''s Press, 2005)
2005
■
+ Cite a sourceThe Freshest Kids: A History of the B-Boy, documentary (2002)
2002
See also