Entry · catalog no. 4501
shout out
/ /ˈʃaʊt aʊt/ /SHOWT-owt
phrase · New York City (Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn) · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
A public acknowledgment, greeting, or word of praise given by name to a person, crew, block, or hometown — traditionally delivered live over a mic, on air, or on record so that the person named, and everyone listening, knows they've been recognized. It functions as a small act of communal honoring: naming someone into the record of a broadcast, a track, or a crowd.
“Before he closed the set, the DJ gave a shout out to the whole West Side, naming three blocks by name.”
Origin & Attribution
Rooted in the DJ and MC culture of the Bronx and greater New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, where park-jam and radio hosts would name people, crews, and neighborhoods live over the mic. Mainstream references sometimes flatten it to generic 'internet slang' or treat it as a recent broadcast-television convention, but it was already an established Black New York radio and public-access practice years before it entered wider American speech; Merriam-Webster itself now labels the word as originating in African American English.
1983-84
Ralph McDaniels and Lionel Martin launch Video Music Box on New York public TV, letting everyday people give shout-outs on camera at clubs and park jams
1984-85
NYC rap-radio hosts on stations like WHBI and WBLS build entire segments around shout-outs to listeners and neighborhoods
1990s-2000s
The term crosses from hip-hop radio and video shows into mainstream broadcasting, sports, and everyday speech nationwide
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
New York City (Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn) · 1980s
Spoken by
Black DJs, radio hosts, MCs, and hip-hop audiences, later adopted nationwide by broadcasters, athletes, and the general
$SHOUTOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Standard42 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
88/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1984
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
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
■
Ralph McDaniels popularized the shout-out
Rolling Stone interview, 2025
■
Video Music Box differed from other video shows of its era and after by eschewing a studio format
Wikipedia entry, Video Music Box
■
+ Cite a sourceoriginally African American English, noun derivative of shout out "to give recognition to, publicly acknowledge"
Merriam-Webster dictionary entry, etymology note
See also