What does “lay your racket” mean?

To run your line — pitch an idea, work a proposition, sell somebody on your scheme.

Entry · catalog no. 1271

lay your racket

/ leɪ jɔːr ˈrækɪt /LAY yor RAK-it

verb phrase · Harlem, New York · 1930s

✓ Verified

To run your line: to talk somebody into something — pitch an idea, work a proposition, sell yourself or your scheme. Your racket is your hustle, your line of work or line of talk; to lay it is to spread it out for the person you are working on.

“He came in smiling and laid his racket for a solid hour before anybody caught on.”

To tease somebody.

“Quit laying your racket on the girl and let her eat.”

Origin & Attribution

Harlem jive of the late 1930s and 1940s, recorded by Cab Calloway and independently by Dan Burley. Racket for a person's hustle or line is older general slang, but the fixed phrase is the Harlem application of it — and the Harlem sense is broad and non-criminal, closer to your game or your line than to the Prohibition-gangster sense that gets read into it. Hurston's 1942 glossary confirms racket was live Harlem speech for one's hustle independently of Calloway. Calloway did not coin the phrase; he collected it from musicians and entertainers and from the Black press.

1938

Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary begins compiling Harlem jive

1942

Hurston's Harlem slang glossary confirms racket as one's hustle

1944

Calloway and Burley both record the phrase in Harlem jive handbooks

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The Northeast

Harlem, New York · 1930s

Spoken by

Harlem musicians, entertainers and hustlers

$LAYYOUThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Faded

88 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

34/100

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

@bxgriot

The Bronx, NY

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Philadelphia, PA

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Citations & Sources

■

Cab Calloway, The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary — dictionary · 1944

submitted

■

Dan Burley, Original Handbook of Harlem Jive — handbook · 1944

submitted

■

Zora Neale Hurston, Glossary of Harlem Slang, American Mercury — glossary · 1942

submitted

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