Entry · catalog no. 4303
Ginny Gall
/ /ˈdʒɪn.i ɡɔːl/ /JIN-ee gawl
noun · Harlem, New York City; Black South · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
A made-up place at the end of the world — "a suburb of Hell," in Hurston's words. One of a family of Harlem names for somewhere impossibly far: past Diddy-Wah-Diddy, out by West Hell and Beluthahatchie.
“You keep on and you'll walk clear to Ginny Gall before anybody comes to get you.”
Origin & Attribution
Black Southern and Harlem folk geography, set down in Zora Neale Hurston's 1942 "Glossary of Harlem Slang," which defines it as "a suburb of Hell." It belongs to a whole imagined map — Diddy-Wah-Diddy, West Hell, Beluthahatchie, Zar — the comic and infernal distances of Black folk speech.
1900s
Circulates in Black folk speech and song
1942
Defined in Hurston's Harlem glossary
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Harlem, New York City; Black South · 1940s
Spoken by
Black Southern and Harlem speakers
$GINNYGThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Dormant84 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
15/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1942
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
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceZora Neale Hurston, "Glossary of Harlem Slang" (American Mercury)
1942
See also