Entry · catalog no. 1215
hype
/ /haɪp/ /HYPE
noun, verb · Harlem and the Black press; national from the late 1960s · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
Persuasive talk aimed at getting money, favor, or a woman's attention.
“He ran his hype on her for an hour and left with cab fare.”
2.
To outsmart or take somebody in.
“Don't let him hype you out of your last dollar.”
3.
To push something on the public past what it is worth.
“They hyped that record for six weeks before anybody heard it.”
Origin & Attribution
Two streams meet in this word and only one is Black. A white American underworld verb "hype," to work a short-change racket, is attested from 1914. The sense the word actually lives on today — persuasion and promotion — is documented first in the Black press: the Pittsburgh Courier, January 1941, on hyping ticket sales. Green's Dictionary of Slang separately marks the "outsmart, cajole" sense as US Black, its earliest citations being Calloway and Dan Burley in 1944 and Malcolm X recalling Harlem hustling of the same decade. Dictionaries commonly derive the word from "hyperbole" or "hypodermic"; etymologists concede neither is evidenced, and the Black print record predates the 1960s music-business usage most accounts credit as the source.
1941
Pittsburgh Courier uses it for pushing ticket sales — earliest promotional sense on record
1944
Calloway and Burley both print it; Calloway's gloss is a build-up for a loan or a woman
1965
Malcolm X's Autobiography, recalling the 1940s: to be hyped was to be outsmarted
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem and the Black press; national from the late 1960s · 1940s
Spoken by
Harlem hustlers, entertainers, and Black newspapermen; later the music industry and, eventually, everyone
$HYPEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady85 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
95/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1941
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
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Pittsburgh Courier — news column — newspaper · 25 Jan 1941
Earliest cite for the promotional sense, per Green's Dictionary of Slang
■
Cab Calloway — The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary — glossary · 1944
Glossed as a build-up for a loan or persuasive talk
■
Dan Burley — Original Handbook of Harlem Jive — book · 1944
p. 107, on hyping the hicks
■
+ Cite a sourceMalcolm X — The Autobiography of Malcolm X — book · 1965
Recalling 1940s Harlem: no hustler could admit to being hyped
See also