Entry · catalog no. 2003
icky
/ ˈɪki /IK-ee
noun · Harlem / jazz circuit · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
One who is not hip; a square who can't follow the jive.
“Don't invite him to the session — he's a natural-born icky.”
Origin & Attribution
Jazz slang defined in Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary (1938) as "one who is not hip, a stupid person that can't collar the jive." Musicians used it for outsiders who didn't get it. The mainstream kept the word but flipped its target — "icky" now means gross or sticky-unpleasant, its origin as a Black musicians' put-down forgotten.
1938
Defined in Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary
1940s
Common jive for a square
mid-1900s
Mainstream shifts it to mean "gross"
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem / jazz circuit · 1930s
Spoken by
Black jazz musicians
$ICKYThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
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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See also