Entry · catalog no. 2919
kicks
/ /kɪks/ /KIKS
noun · Northeast U.S. (New York), spreading nationwide via Black urban and hip-hop cult · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
Shoes — especially sneakers, but extended to any footwear worth naming, from run-of-the-mill takes to a prized, closet-worthy pair. In Black vernacular the word carries more than plainness; it flags footwear as a marker of care, taste, and status — 'fresh kicks' means the shoes are new, clean, or otherwise on point, and asking someone about their kicks is asking about their whole presentation.
“He came through the block in some clean white kicks he'd just copped that morning.”
Origin & Attribution
The word's paper trail starts outside Black communities, in tramp and prison argot of the 1890s–1900s, where a 'pair of kicks' meant a pair of shoes as underworld shorthand. It moved through jazz-scene slang in the 1920s–1950s before being taken up and remade within Black American vernacular by the 1960s, where it shed its criminal-cant flavor and became an everyday, affectionate term — especially once sneakers themselves became a marker of style in Black urban youth culture. By the 1980s, as sneaker culture crystallized around hip-hop in New York and other cities, 'kicks' was the community's
1895
Earliest print use as 'shoes' appears in tramp-narrator slang (Jack London tale).
1960s
Term is taken up in Black American vernacular, moving past its underworld-cant origins.
1984
David Toop's The Rap Attack documents 'kicks' as the in-group term for sneakers in Black and hip-hop street culture.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Northeast U.S. (New York), spreading nationwide via Black urban and hip-hop cult · 1960s
Spoken by
Black American speakers broadly, especially within hip-hop, sneaker, and street culture; adopted widely by youth culture
$KICKSThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring131 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
1895
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
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
“Kicks, shoes.”
1904 prison memoir, Life in Sing Sing
■
“kicks: synonymous with sneakers, which are the last word in footwear.”
1984, The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip Hop, Davi
■
+ Cite a source“Sport the dope threads and the $100 kicks.”
1993, rap song 'I Got It Goin' On,' Us3
See also