Entry · catalog no. 1254
mash me a fin
/ /mæʃ mi ə ˈfɪn/ /MASH mee uh FIN
phr. · Harlem, New York City · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
Give me five dollars. Mash me is the ask — give me, pass me; a fin is a five-dollar bill. Said to a friend, with the expectation of a yes.
“Mash me a fin, gate, and I will square it Friday.”
Origin & Attribution
Black Harlem, 1930s and 1940s. Calloway lists the whole phrase as a command in the Hepster's Dictionary, and Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive carries the bare verb — mash me, give me — in 1944. Mezz Mezzrow has a man asking for three instead of five in Really the Blues. Calloway quotes himself using it in his 1976 memoir Of Minnie the Moocher and Me. The fin is the older and wider half of the phrase, a five-dollar bill by way of German and Yiddish funf; the Harlem contribution is mash me.
1944
Printed as a command in the Hepster's Dictionary; Burley lists mash me
1946
Mezzrow's Really the Blues uses the frame for a three-dollar ask
1976
Calloway quotes his own use in Of Minnie the Moocher and Me
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem, New York City · 1940s
Spoken by
Harlem jive speakers; jazz musicians
$MASHMEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Dormant82 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
10/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1944
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
■
The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary: Language of Jive
1944
■
Dan Burley, Original Handbook of Harlem Jive
1944
■
+ Cite a sourceCab Calloway, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me
1976
See also