Entry · catalog no. 3681
cat
/ — /pending
noun · Harlem / nationwide · 2026
✓ Verified
1.
A person, especially a man; originally a jazz musician. Carries an undertone of ease and self-possession — a cat is somebody who moves through the world with cool.
“That old cat at the barbershop used to play trumpet with Basie.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem jazz world of the 1920s and 30s. Codified in Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary (1938), the first dictionary published by a Black American, where a cat was a musician in a swing band. Long since widened to mean any man, and absorbed so completely into American English that most speakers have no idea where it came from.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Harlem / nationwide · 2026
Spoken by
Harlem / nationwide
$CATThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising0 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
12/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2026
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.
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@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A Hepster's Dictionary — book · 1938
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceStory in Harlem Slang, Zora Neale Hurston — short story with glossary · 1942
submitted
See also