Entry · catalog no. 2403

main on the hitch

/ /ˌmeɪn ɒn ðə ˈhɪtʃ/ /MAIN on thuh HITCH

noun · Harlem, New York City · 1940s

✓ Verified

A husband. The phrase is built from two ordinary pieces of the language — main, meaning number one or chief, and hitched, meaning married — so it names the man a woman is actually married to, as distinct from a boyfriend or a man she is only seeing. It was used by and about women, and it carried standing: the main one, the one it is official with.

“She had to cut out early — her main on the hitch was working days and she had his dinner to make.”

Origin & Attribution

This is Harlem speech of the late 1930s and early 1940s, part of a whole family of main constructions in Black usage — main queen, main man, main stash, main stem — where main marked the primary one of its kind. The earliest print confirmed is the Pittsburgh Courier of 12 July 1941, in the variant main-on-the-hatch, in a line about a husband drafted away to camp. By 1944 it sat in two Harlem glossaries published the same year, Cab Calloway's revised Hepster's Dictionary and the Jiver's Bible glossary in Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, both giving it simply as husband. Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe recorded the counterpart in Really the Blues in 1946: a wife was the main saw on the hitch. The term is often credited to Calloway as a coinage. It was not his. The Black press had it in print three years before his revised dictionary, and Calloway's glossaries compiled what he heard on Lenox Avenue rather than inventing it.

1941

Pittsburgh Courier prints the variant main-on-the-hatch in running prose about a drafted husband

1944

Listed as husband in Cab Calloway's revised Hepster's Dictionary

1944

Also listed in the Jiver's Bible glossary in Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive

1946

Mezzrow and Wolfe record the counterpart main saw on the hitch for a wife in Really the Blues

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The Northeast

Harlem, New York City · 1940s

Spoken by

Black Harlem speakers, especially women naming their husbands; carried in the Black press and jive glossaries

$MAINONThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Historical

85 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

25/100

peak cultural energy

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

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1941

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

@phillyanne

Philadelphia, PA

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Citations & Sources

■

Pittsburgh Courier, 12 July 1941 — Uncle Sam took her main-on-the-hatch off to camp

newspaper

■

Cab Calloway, Hepster's Dictionary (revised editions, 1939–1944) — main on the hitch (n.): husband

glossary

■

Jiver's Bible glossary in Dan Burley, Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive (privately published, New York, 1944)

glossary

■

Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues (Random House, 1946) — your main saw on the hitch

book

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