Entry · catalog no. 1019
sender
/ /ˈsɛn.dɚ/ /SEN-dur
noun · Harlem, New York City · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A person or thing that thrills you — that sends you, that moves you emotionally. A performer, a song, or a lover who lifts you up.
“That horn player is a real sender.”
Origin & Attribution
Swing-era Harlem. From the verb send, to arouse joyful emotion, recorded in Cab Calloway's 1938 Hepster's Dictionary ("That sends me!"). A staple of Black musical language that the mainstream later softened into the generic "sensational."
1938
In Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary
1950s
Softened into mainstream sensational
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem, New York City · 1930s
Spoken by
Swing-era Harlem musicians
$SENDERThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Dormant88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
25/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1938
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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