Entry · catalog no. 1038
cakewalk
/ /ˈkeɪkˌwɔːk/ /KAYK-wawk
noun · Southern plantations · nationwide · 1890s
✓ Verified
1.
Originally a strutting couples' promenade danced in fine clothes with high kicks and exaggerated grace. In wider speech, something won easily or done with no effort at all.
“After all that practice, the recital was a cakewalk.”
Origin & Attribution
Born among enslaved people on Southern plantations, who dressed up and paraded in a pointed parody of the stiff ballroom manners of the enslavers, many of whom watched and missed the joke. Winners took a cake, hence the name. It became a national craze in the 1890s and seeded ragtime. The common "something easy" sense strips away this history of coded resistance.
pre-1865
Danced by enslaved people as parody of ballroom manners
1890s
National craze; seeds ragtime
1900s+
Survives as a word for anything won easily
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Southern plantations · nationwide · 1890s
Spoken by
Enslaved and freed Black Southerners; a national craze by the 1890s
$CAKEWAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded149 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
40/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1877
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
National Museum of American History, "Who takes the cake?" — museum record
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceDebussy, "Golliwogg's Cake-walk" — composition · 1908
submitted
See also