Entry · catalog no. 1010
gig
/ ɡɪɡ /GIG
noun · Jazz circuit / nationwide · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
A job, especially a musician's booking; now any piece of paid work. The word behind "gig economy."
“He picked up a weekend gig playing keys at the lounge on MLK.”
Origin & Attribution
Black jazz musicians' working slang from the 1920s, in print by 1926 and glossed in the revised Hepster's Dictionary editions of the 1940s as a job of playing. Corporate America adopted it wholesale in the 2010s — the "gig economy" runs on a word Black horn players coined a century ago.
1920s
Musicians' word for a booking
1926
In print in Melody Maker
2010s
"Gig economy" enters mainstream
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Jazz circuit / nationwide · 1920s
Spoken by
Black jazz musicians
$GIGThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising100 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
90/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1926
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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@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Melody Maker — magazine · 1926
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceThe New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary — book · 1944
submitted
See also