Entry · catalog no. 1062
in the groove
/ /
phrase · northeast ·
✓ Verified
1.
Locked in and moving right — nothing forced, nothing off. Calloway's gloss: perfect, no deviation, down the alley.
“Once the rhythm section settled, the whole band was in the groove.”
Origin & Attribution
Black swing musicians, 1930s. The groove was first a literal thing — the record groove the needle rode — and became the name for the feel a band finds when it stops fighting the time. The word survives in mainstream English as groovy, a 1960s softening that hid where it came from.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
northeast ·
Spoken by
$INTHEGThe Record · cultural traction
▲ 26 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
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
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceCab Calloway — Hepster's Dictionary: A Guide to the Language of Jive — book · 1938
submitted
See also