Entry · catalog no. 3605
nix out
/ /ˌnɪks ˈaʊt/ /niks OWT
verb · Harlem, New York · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
To eliminate, cancel, or drop something from consideration.
“She nixed out the whole uptown crowd after that night.”
2.
To break off with a person; to put somebody out of your life.
“He nixed her out before the month was through.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem from 1939 forward, out of the Black gossip columns as much as the street. Dan Burley printed it in his Back Door Stuff column in the New York Amsterdam News on 10 June 1939, five years before Cab Calloway's glossary picked it up. Two corrections travel with this word. First the meaning: the Calloway entry glosses it as to eliminate or get rid of, not to leave — the departure sense belongs to bare nix and rests on a single author. Second the date: that Calloway entry is from the 1944 edition, not 1938. And be plain about what is and is not Black here. Bare nix is old British cant by way of the German nichts and was general American slang by 1901. The particle construction — nix out, nix off — is the Harlem contribution.
1939
Dan Burley uses it in his column in the New York Amsterdam News on 10 June
1941
The Pittsburgh Courier runs it in a jive glossary on 24 May
1958
Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps include it in The Book of Negro Folklore
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem, New York · 1930s
Spoken by
Black Harlem — the jive-talking set and the Amsterdam News and Courier columnists who wrote for them
$NIXOUTThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical87 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
22/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1939
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
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Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Dan Burley, "Back Door Stuff," New York Amsterdam News, 10 June 1939, p. 16
newspaper
■
Pittsburgh Courier, 24 May 1941, p. 11
newspaper
■
Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, Random House, 1946, p. 122
book
■
+ Cite a sourceLangston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, eds., The Book of Negro Folklore, Dodd, Mead, 1958, p. 486
book
See also