Entry · catalog no. 7404
dime note
/ /ˈdaɪm noʊt/ /DYM-noht
noun · Harlem, New York City · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A ten-dollar bill. Jive counted money in pictures — a fin, a sawbuck, a dime note — and the dime note sat in the middle of a working musician's week.
“The door cost a dime note and the band was worth twice that.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem jive of the 1930s, recorded in Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary (1938): "dime note: ten-dollar bill." Kin to the later plain "dime" for ten of anything; the note dropped away with the era that folded its money.
1938
Defined in Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem, New York City · 1930s
Spoken by
Harlem swing musicians and hep cats
$DIMENOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Dormant88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
20/100
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.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
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Citations & Sources
■
Cab Calloway, Hepster's Dictionary: Language of Jive
1938
■
+ Cite a sourceThe New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary
1944
See also