Entry · catalog no. 1187
mitt pounding
/ /ˈmɪt ˌpaʊndɪŋ/ /MIT POWN-ding
noun · Harlem and the Black theater circuit; carried nationally by the Black press · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
Applause, particularly the loud and sustained kind, at a theater, a dance, or a club date. Mitts are hands, and the compound puts the labor out front: the house is not clapping politely, it is pounding. The phrase belonged to the working vocabulary of Black show business and the Black press, where a performer's night could be measured in how much mitt pounding came up out of the room.
“The hall was doing the sardine act and the mitt pounding came up like thunder.”
2.
Shortened to mitt, the same sense — the applause itself, or the giving of it.
“She picked up a fine mitt on every number she sang.”
Origin & Attribution
Black show-business and Black newspaper slang, 1938 to 1944. The earliest dated print use found is in the Jackson Sun of Tennessee on 25 August 1938; the Pittsburgh Courier used it twice in a single column of show coverage on 10 February 1940. Cab Calloway printed it in his Hepster's Dictionary, and his own foreword says where such words came from: Billy Rowe's column The Notebook in the Pittsburgh Courier. Calloway was compiling from the Black press, not coining for it.
1938
Jackson Sun, Tennessee, 25 August: all model Harlemites and Gothamites will rally roun' with mitt pounding — the earliest dated use found
1940
Pittsburgh Courier, 10 February, uses the term twice in one column of show coverage
1944
Printed in both the sixth edition of Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary and Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem and the Black theater circuit; carried nationally by the Black press · 1930s
Spoken by
Black performers, bandsmen, and Black newspaper columnists
$MITTPOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical88 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
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.
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The Bronx, NY
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Philadelphia, PA
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Citations & Sources
■
Green's Dictionary of Slang, entry mitt, n., recording 1938, 1940, 1942 and 1944 attestations
dictionary · online
■
Jackson Sun, Tennessee, 25 August 1938
newspaper · printed
■
Pittsburgh Courier, Pennsylvania, 10 February 1940
newspaper · printed
■
The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary: Language of Jive, sixth edition, 1944
dictionary · printed
■
+ Cite a sourceDan Burley, Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, 1944
book · printed
See also