Entry · catalog no. 4321
have a ball
/ /hæv ə ˈbɔːl/ /hav uh BAWL
phrase · Southern and urban blues circuit · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
To have a thoroughly good time; to celebrate without holding back. The ball in question is not a dance — it is any occasion turned into one. Often reflexive: have yourself a ball.
“We had ourselves a ball down there, didn't get in till the sun was up.”
Origin & Attribution
Black blues and jazz circuits of the South and the urban North, in the record by 1927. Say the boundary plainly: ball meaning a formal dance is standard English from the early 1600s, out of French bal. Nobody disputes that. What is Black is the extension — ball as a riotous good time with no dance floor anywhere near it, and the fixed verb phrase built on it. The earliest known instance of that sense is a blues record: Lonnie Johnson, Bitin' Fleas Blues, cut in New York on 9 November 1927 and issued on OKeh 8524 — they come in my room to have a ball. Hugh Sebastian recorded ball as a riotous party in Black student speech at Lincoln University in 1934. Zora Neale Hurston's 1942 Harlem glossary carries bailing, having fun. Calloway printed it in 1944. Idiom sites that call this a 1940s American coinage are beaten by thirteen years and by a Black record.
1927
Lonnie Johnson cuts Bitin' Fleas Blues for OKeh, 9 November
1942
Hurston's Harlem glossary carries the sense as bailing
1944
Calloway prints it: to enjoy yourself, stage a celebration
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Southern and urban blues circuit · 1920s
Spoken by
Blues and jazz musicians and audiences, South and urban North; now general
$HAVEABThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady99 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1927
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
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
"Bitin' Fleas Blues" — Lonnie Johnson, OKeh 8524, rec. 9 Nov 1927 — song · 1927
song
■
"Story in Harlem Slang," Zora Neale Hurston, The American Mercury, with authorial glossary — magazine · July 1942
published
■
Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary, 6th ed. — glossary · 1944
researched
■
+ Cite a source"For All My Niggaz & Bitches" — Snoop Doggy Dogg, Doggystyle — song · 1993
song
See also