Entry · catalog no. 9840
hood
/ /hʊd/ /HUUD
noun · U.S. South Side Chicago originally, later Los Angeles and nationwide Black urban · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
One's home neighborhood or block, especially a Black urban community and the people, streets, and daily life that make it up; used both plainly ("I'm from the hood") and as a marker of pride, belonging, and shared struggle rather than simply a synonym for "bad neighborhood." Carries a double register: inside the community it names home, kin, and turf with affection; outside it, especially in mainstream and media use, it gets flattened into a stand-in for poverty, crime, or Blackness itself — a narrowing the community itself did not intend.
“She still goes back to the hood every Sunday to see her grandmother and get her hair done.”
Origin & Attribution
Clipped from "neighborhood" inside Black urban vernacular; the earliest attributed use ties it to Chicago's Black South Side gang culture of the 1960s, with the Blackstone Rangers cited as early carriers of the shortened form. The Oxford English Dictionary's first documented print citation appears in a February 1969 issue of the academic journal Trans-action, glossing a speaker's own words: 'He come back over to the hood (neighborhood).' Some etymological sources place wider circulation, especially in Los Angeles Black slang, in the 1980s, and the word reached national mainstream awareness thr
1960s
Shortened form of neighborhood circulates in Black Chicago community and gang vernacular, including the Blackstone Rangers
1969
Earliest documented print citation appears in the journal Trans-action, quoting a speaker using and glossing the word
1987
NWA's song "Boyz-n-the-Hood" helps carry the term into mainstream hip-hop vocabulary
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
U.S. South Side Chicago originally, later Los Angeles and nationwide Black urban · 1960s
Spoken by
Black Americans across urban communities nationwide, especially those describing their home neighborhood or block; widel
$HOODThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Standard57 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
1969
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
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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Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
He come back over to the hood (neighborhood)
Trans-action: Social Science and the Community, February 196
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shortened form of neighborhood, by 1987, African-American vernacular
Etymonline, etymological dictionary entry
■
+ Cite a sourceThe shortening of "the neighborhood" to "the hood" originated in the black community
Quora discussion citing Blackstone Rangers, Chicago 1960s
See also