Entry · catalog no. 0061
elbows
/ /ˈɛlboʊz/ /EL-bohz
noun (plural) · Houston, Texas — the South Side, Sunnyside and Third Ward · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
Extended wire-spoke rims whose hub and center spoke stick several inches past the body of the car. On a Houston slab they are not an option, they are the requirement.
“Candy paint, popped trunk, elbows out past the fender.”
2.
By extension, the slab look itself, invoked as shorthand for the whole culture.
“Candy paint and elbows.”
Origin & Attribution
Houston, out of the Black car culture that formed on the South Side across the 1980s and 1990s. The name is a body metaphor: the protruding center spoke sticks out the way a bent arm does at the joint. The important thing to record is that elbows is not a different wheel from swangas. It is the same object under a different name, sitting alongside 83s, 84s and 4s, all of which name the same Cragar-derived extended wire wheel. Size and poke depth are carried by 83s against 84s and by standard against super poke — not by elbows against swangas.
2013
Houston's first SLAB Parade and Family Festival is held at MacGregor Park; press coverage puts the word in print
2015
Paul Wall's Slab God carries Swangin in the Rain, with the elbows poking past the fender
2016
Candy paint and elbows runs in a national headline
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Houston, Texas — the South Side, Sunnyside and Third Ward · 1990s
Spoken by
Houston slab riders; Houston rappers and their listeners
$ELBOWSThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady13 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
2013
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
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Nathan Smith, 10 Swang-and-Bang Anthems for Sunday's SLAB Parade, Houston Press, 17 Oct.
2013
■
Paul Wall, Swangin in the Rain, Slab God
2015
■
Candy paint and elbows: Houston's slab scene, CNN Travel, 2 Nov.
2016
■
+ Cite a sourceLangston Collin Wilkins, Welcome 2 Houston (University of Illinois Press)
2023
See also