Entry · catalog no. 0037
slave
/ ˈsleɪv /SLAYV
v. · Harlem, New York City · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
To work. Recorded in Harlem musicians' slang of the 1930s for holding a job of any kind, arduous or not — the day work a player took between gigs as much as hard labor. The word does the editorial by itself: wage work named after the thing wage work was supposed to have replaced.
“He was slaving downtown all week just to make the Saturday session.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem jazz musicians of the 1930s. It is recorded in Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A Hepster's Dictionary, published in 1938 and expanded in 1944 — reputedly the first dictionary of slang published by a Black American entertainer, and taken up as a reference by the New York Public Library. Calloway glossed it plainly: to work, whether arduous labor or not.
1938
Cab Calloway publishes Cat-ologue: A Hepster's Dictionary, recording the term
1944
An expanded edition appears as the New Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem, New York City · 1930s
Spoken by
Harlem jazz musicians and the hep-talk circuit of the 1930s and 1940s
$SLAVEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded88 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.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceCab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A Hepster's Dictionary — Cab Calloway, 1938; expanded edition 1944
text · glossary
See also