Entry · catalog no. 0001
evil
/ ˈiːvəl /EE-vuhl
adjective · U.S. South, carried north to Kansas City, Chicago and Harlem · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
Of a person: in a sour, angry or hostile temper — bad-humored rather than wicked. It names a mood a person is in, not a condition of the soul. A body can be evil on Monday and fine by Tuesday.
“Don't say nothing to him this morning — he woke up evil.”
2.
Of a fixed disposition: mean, hard-hearted, given to cruelty. Stronger than the first sense and closer to a standing judgment of character, though still short of the theological meaning.
“That evil old woman never gave nobody a dime.”
Origin & Attribution
Carried in Southern Black speech and the blues long before it reached Harlem. Ada Brown cut "Evil Mama Blues" with Bennie Moten's Kansas City band in 1923, fifteen years before any jive glossary printed it. Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary is regularly credited as the source; it is not. Calloway recorded a word already in wide use, and his own foreword says plainly that the entries were gathered, not invented.
1923
Ada Brown records "Evil Mama Blues" with Bennie Moten, Okeh Records
1939
First glossary entry, Herbert & Spencer, Jitterbug Jamboree Song Book
1945
Chester Himes puts it in a character's mouth in If He Hollers Let Him Go
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
U.S. South, carried north to Kansas City, Chicago and Harlem · 1920s
Spoken by
Blues singers, Southern Black families, Harlem musicians
$EVILThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady103 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1923
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
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Citations & Sources
■
"Evil Mama Blues" — Ada Brown with Bennie Moten's Orchestra, Okeh Records, 1923
audio · recording
■
If He Hollers Let Him Go — Chester Himes, 1945
text · novel
■
Makes Me Wanna Holler — Nathan McCall, 1994
text · memoir
■
+ Cite a sourceGreen's Dictionary of Slang, evil adj. — Jonathon Green
text · cited
See also