Entry · catalog no. 3111

juke

/ ˈdʒuːk /JOOK

verb · Sea Islands / South · 1930s

✓ Verified

To dance, party, or move loose and low; a juke or juke joint is the roadside spot where that happens. Later, in sports, to fake a defender out of position.

“We juked in that little spot off Highway 61 till the floorboards gave.”

Origin & Attribution

From Gullah joog or juk — disorderly, wicked — traced by linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner to Wolof and Bambara roots. One of the clearest African survivals in American English: the word came through the Sea Islands, named the juke joint, then the jukebox, then Chicago's juke house music.

1930

Kansas City Call, 25 July: "Bear Creek camp has no jook house"

1934

Hurston, Characteristics of Negro Expression: "The singing and playing in the true Negro style is called jooking"

1939

"Jook-box" in print, Moorhead, Mississippi, 15 Apr

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The South

Sea Islands / South · 1930s

Spoken by

Gullah-Geechee coastal communities; Southern turpentine and lumber camp workers

$JUKEThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Steady

96 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

80/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1930

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.

Hear it spoken

By region — how it actually sounds

@nolakid

New Orleans, LA

@htxdri

Houston, TX

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, Lorenzo Dow Turner — book · 1949

submitted

■

Characteristics of Negro Expression, Zora Neale Hurston — essay · 1934

submitted

+ Cite a source