Entry · catalog no. 7213
got your boots on
/ /ɡɑt jər ˈbuts ɑn/ /got yer BOOTS on
phrase · Harlem, New York · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
To be wise, informed, and impossible to fool; to know what is going on. In Harlem jive, a hep cat had his boots on — the unhep got caught barefoot.
“No need to school him on the scene, that cat's got his boots on.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem's Black jazz world of the 1930s. The phrase moved among musicians and the nightlife crowd and was set down by bandleader Cab Calloway in his Hepster's Dictionary (1938), the jive glossary he kept in print through 1944.
1938
Cab Calloway prints the phrase in his Hepster's Dictionary
1944
Carried through The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary, adopted as a reference by the New York Public Library
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem, New York · 1930s
Spoken by
Harlem jazz musicians and the hep set
$GOTYOUThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
18/100
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
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
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Citations & Sources
■
Cab Calloway, Hepster's Dictionary: Language of Jive
1938
■
+ Cite a sourceThe New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary
1944
See also