Entry · catalog no. 1202
Oreo
/ /ˈɔrioʊ/ /OR-ee-oh
noun · nationwide · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
A Black person judged to have taken on the manners, speech, tastes, and loyalties of white middle-class life at the cost of their own. The figure is the cookie: dark on the outside, white in the middle. It is an accusation of desertion rather than of taste, which is why it cuts as deep as it does and why it is almost never said lightly.
“They called him an Oreo all through high school and he has not been back to a reunion since.”
2.
Used by the accused, as a wound and sometimes as a shrug — the name for what happens to a Black kid in a white school who does what the school asks of him.
“Too Black at school, Oreo at home. Pick a side, they said, like there was one.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American speech of the late 1960s and 1970s, in the years when integration put large numbers of Black children into white schools and Black adults into white workplaces for the first time, and when the terms of Black political belonging were being argued out loudly. The dictionaries differ on the year: the Oxford English Dictionary's earliest evidence is 1975, the Online Etymology Dictionary dates it to 1968, and Dictionary.com gives a range of 1965 to 1970.
1968
Earliest date given for the usage by the Online Etymology Dictionary, which labels it African American vernacular
1975
Earliest evidence recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
nationwide · 1960s
Spoken by
Black Americans, in the specific register of policing who belongs
$OREOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady58 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1968
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Oxford English Dictionary, entry Oreo, n.2, earliest evidence 1975
dictionary · online
■
Online Etymology Dictionary, entry Oreo, dating the usage to 1968
dictionary · online
■
+ Cite a sourceDictionary.com, entry Oreo, dating the usage 1965–70
dictionary · online
See also