Entry · catalog no. 1071
off the cob
/ /
adjective · Harlem, New York ·
✓ Verified
1.
Corny; out of date; badly out of step with what's happening.
“That joke was off the cob before we even got here.”
Origin & Attribution
From Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary (1938): "corny, out of date." Corn and corny as words for the unsophisticated passed into general American English through Black musicians' jive, where the judgment was aesthetic and exacting.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Harlem, New York ·
Spoken by
$OFFTHEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ 26 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
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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Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceCab Calloway, Hepster's Dictionary: A Guide to the Language of Jive — dictionary · 1938
submitted
See also