Entry · catalog no. 8209
funk
/ /fʌŋk/ /FUNK
noun · Georgia and the Deep South · 1900s
✓ Verified
1.
An earthy, strongly felt quality, first of sweat, smell and honest labor, then of music and manner. Also the music that grew from it, with tight syncopated bass, guitar and drums leaning on the first beat of the measure.
“When the band locked into the One, the whole room started to funk.”
Origin & Attribution
The word reaches English in about 1620 for a strong smell, from French and ultimately Latin fumigare, to smoke. In white usage it stayed unpleasant, a bad odor or mood. Among Black musicians it flipped: by about 1900 in early jazz speech it meant something deeply, strongly felt, tied to the honest sweat of performance. James Brown built a style on that feeling in the mid-1960s, stressing the downbeat, the One, with syncopated bass, sixteenth-note drums and guitar; \"Papa's Got a Brand New Bag\" (1965) and \"Cold Sweat\" (1967) are the landmark records. This is the Black sense of the word; the bad-mood \"in a funk\" is the older mainstream one.
1900
funky in early jazz speech: deeply, strongly felt
1965
James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"
1967
James Brown, "Cold Sweat"
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Georgia and the Deep South · 1900s
Spoken by
Black musicians and listeners, then general American English
$FUNKThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady67 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
80/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1900
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1967
search interest spikes
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
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Atlanta, GA
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Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," King Records, 1965
1965
■
James Brown, "Cold Sweat," King Records, 1967
1967
■
+ Cite a sourceWikipedia, "Funk" (etymology and early jazz usage)
online
See also