Entry · catalog no. 1074

frolic pad

/ /ˈfrɒlɪk pæd/ /FROL-ik-pad

noun · Harlem, New York · 1930s

✓ Verified

A place of entertainment — a club, a theater, a spot where the night gets spent.

“Every frolic pad on Lenox was packed that Saturday.”

Origin & Attribution

From Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary (1938): "place of entertainment, theater, nightclub." Built on pad, the older jive word for a room or a bed, which outlived it.

1938

Defined in Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The Northeast

Harlem, New York · 1930s

Spoken by

Harlem swing musicians

$FROLICThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Faded

88 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

18/100

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.

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By region — how it actually sounds

@bxgriot

The Bronx, NY

@phillyanne

Philadelphia, PA

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Citations & Sources

■

Cab Calloway, Hepster's Dictionary: A Guide to the Language of Jive — dictionary · 1938

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