Entry · catalog no. 4072
peola
/ /piˈoʊlə/ /pee-OH-luh
noun · nationwide · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A Black woman so light-skinned she reads as nearly white. Named for a character who passes for white on screen.
“They called her a peola all through school.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American speech of the 1930s, taken straight from the movies. Peola was the light-skinned daughter who passes for white in the 1934 film Imitation of Life (from Fannie Hurst's 1933 novel), played by Fredi Washington. The film hit Black audiences hard, and the name entered the language for a colorism it laid bare. Zora Neale Hurston listed it in her 1942 glossary of Harlem slang.
1933
Fannie Hurst's novel Imitation of Life names the character Peola
1934
Film adaptation makes the name resonate with Black audiences
1942
Hurston records 'peola' in her Harlem slang glossary
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
nationwide · 1930s
Spoken by
Black American communities
$PEOLAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Fading92 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
28/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1934
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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Atlanta, GA
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Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Imitation of Life — film · 1934
researched
■
Zora Neale Hurston — "Glossary of Harlem Slang" · 1942
researched
■
+ Cite a sourcepeola, n. — Green's Dictionary of Slang — reference
researched
See also