Entry · catalog no. 9204
gabriel
/ /ˈɡeɪbriəl/ /GAY-bree-ul
noun · Harlem, New York City · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
Jazz and Harlem slang of the swing era for a trumpet player, after the archangel Gabriel and his horn.
“Four gabriels in the back row and the whole house was shaking.”
Origin & Attribution
Cab Calloway printed "Gabriels" in his 1938 glossary of jive, defined as trumpet players. He does not explain the word, but the allusion is plain: the archangel Gabriel is the horn-blower of the Judgment in the Black church and spiritual tradition, and jazz musicians of the era borrowed church imagery freely. The term comes out of the Harlem and big-band world around Calloway's Cotton Club orchestra.
1938
Cab Calloway's glossary lists "gabriels" as trumpet players
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem, New York City · 1930s
Spoken by
Black jazz musicians and their audiences of the swing era
$GABRIEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
6/100
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
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
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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Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceCab Calloway, Cab Calloway's Cat-alogue: A Hepster's Dictionary (1938)
print
See also