Entry · catalog no. 1066
kitchen mechanic
/ /ˈkɪtʃ.ən mɪˈkæn.ɪk/ /KITCH-in muh-KAN-ik
noun · Harlem, New York · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
A domestic worker — a woman paid to cook and clean in someone else's house.
“Her mama came up from Georgia and worked as a kitchen mechanic on Riverside Drive for thirty years.”
Origin & Attribution
Recorded in Zora Neale Hurston's glossary to "Story in Harlem Slang," published in The American Mercury in July 1942, where she defines it flatly as "a domestic." The phrase belongs to the Great Migration generation, when domestic service was the widest door open to Black women arriving in Northern cities. Harlem speech named the work without apology.
1942
In Hurston's Story in Harlem Slang glossary
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem, New York · 1940s
Spoken by
Great Migration Harlem speakers
$KITCHEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Dormant84 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
18/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1942
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.
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Citations & Sources
■
Zora Neale Hurston, "Story in Harlem Slang," The American Mercury (with glossary) — short story · 1942
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceZora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories, Library of America — book reprint · 1995
submitted
See also