Entry · catalog no. 1048

killer-diller

/ /ˈkɪlər ˈdɪlər/ /KIL-er-DIL-er

noun · Harlem, New York · 1930s

✓ Verified

Something or someone thrilling, first-rate, a knockout. A jive superlative from the swing era.

“That new band down at the hall is a killer-diller.”

Origin & Attribution

Documented in bandleader Cab Calloway's "Hepster's Dictionary" (1938), the first published glossary of the jive spoken by Black musicians in Harlem, where it is glossed as a great thrill.

1938

Documented in Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The Northeast

Harlem, New York · 1930s

Spoken by

Harlem swing musicians

$KILLERThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Faded

88 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

30/100

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

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The Bronx, NY

@phillyanne

Philadelphia, PA

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Citations & Sources

■

Cab Calloway, "Hepster's Dictionary: Language of Jive" — glossary · 1938

submitted

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