Entry · catalog no. 7784
get down
/ /ɡɛt daʊn/ /get DOWN
verb phrase · Nationwide · 1970s
✓ Verified
1.
To throw yourself into it without holding back — dancing, playing, partying, working. On the floor it means dance hard; on an instrument it means play like you mean it.
“Soon as the bass dropped, the whole room got down.”
Origin & Attribution
Black soul and funk culture of the late 1960s and early '70s. The phrase ran through the records — Curtis Mayfield's Get Down (1971), Kool & the Gang's Jungle Boogie (1973) — before disco delivered it to the whole country.
1971
Curtis Mayfield releases Get Down on the Roots album
1973
Kool & the Gang chant it through Jungle Boogie
1970s
Disco takes the phrase to general American usage
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Nationwide · 1970s
Spoken by
Black funk, soul and disco culture; then every American dance floor
$GETDOWThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring55 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
68/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1971
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Curtis Mayfield, Get Down, from Roots (Curtom)
1971
■
+ Cite a sourceKool & the Gang, Jungle Boogie, from Wild and Peaceful (De-Lite)
1973
See also