Entry · catalog no. 4337
reet
/ /riːt/ /reet
adjective · Harlem, New York City; national via the swing circuit · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
Right; fine, correct, in order. To be all reet is to be squared away and ready. Used as a general affirmative and as an intensifier.
“Are you all reet? Jump in the groove and go.”
2.
As a modifier, sharp or properly cut — most famously the reet pleat of a zoot suit trouser.
“So Jelly got into his zoot suit with the reet pleats.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem and the touring swing bands, late 1930s into the 1940s. An eye-dialect rendering of right in Black musicians' speech, carried across the country on records and in the Black press. Cab Calloway is the name most attached to it, and correctly so — but through his 1941 record, not his dictionary. The word is not a headword in either the 1938 Hepster's Dictionary or the 1944 revision, and the common claim that it was is an error worth retiring.
1941
Cab Calloway and His Orchestra record Are You All Reet? for Okeh, 16 January
1942
Zora Neale Hurston prints zoot suit with the reet pleats in American Mercury
1957
Jackie Wilson's Reet Petite carries the word into the rock and roll era
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem, New York City; national via the swing circuit · 1940s
Spoken by
Swing-era musicians, dancers and hepcats
$REETThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical85 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
18/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1941
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
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, Are You All Reet? (Okeh)
1941
■
Zora Neale Hurston, Story in Harlem Slang (American Mercury)
1942
■
+ Cite a sourceJackie Wilson, Reet Petite (Brunswick)
1957
See also