Entry · catalog no. 2004
sky piece
/ ˈskaɪ piːs /SKY-peess
noun · Harlem / jazz circuit · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A hat.
“Cocked his sky piece to the side and hit the door.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem jive of the swing era, glossed in Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary (1938) simply as "hat." Of a piece with a lexicon that renamed the everyday with wit — the head's "sky piece," the teeth "crumb crushers."
1938
Glossed as "hat" in Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary
1940s
Current in swing-era jive
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem / jazz circuit · 1930s
Spoken by
Black jazz musicians
$SKYPIEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
40/100
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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Atlanta, GA
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Memphis, TN
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See also