Entry · catalog no. 4255
snapping
/ /ˈsnæpɪŋ/ /SNAP-ing
noun · Black American; the 1990s wave centered in New York · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
The exchange of ritual insults, each individual line called a snap. The same game the older record calls the dozens, sounding, signifying, woofing or joning, under the name it carried nationally in the 1990s.
“They were snapping on each other in the barbershop for a solid hour.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American, and old — Elijah Wald's Talking 'Bout Your Mama treats snaps as continuous with the dozens, whose roots run back through generations of Black verbal play. What is 1990s about the word is the name and its packaging. Snaps, by James Percelay, Monteria Ivey and Stephan Dweck, was published by William Morrow in 1994 and ran to roughly five hundred insults sorted by category, with Double Snaps and Triple Snaps behind it. HBO made a series of it in 1995, hosted by Ivey and taped at La MaMa in New York, marketed in the lane Def Comedy Jam had opened. Regional names for the same game were never replaced, only overlaid: Labov recorded woofing in Philadelphia, joning in Washington, signifying in Chicago, screaming in Harrisburg, and cutting or chopping on the West Coast. Snapping is the commercial national name, not the original one, and nothing about the 1990s invented the game.
1994
Snaps published by William Morrow
1995
HBO's Snaps airs, hosted by Monteria Ivey
2012
Elijah Wald's Talking 'Bout Your Mama places snaps in the dozens tradition
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Black American; the 1990s wave centered in New York · 1990s
Spoken by
Black American speakers; the 1990s commercial wave centered in New York
$SNAPPIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded1 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1994
in the culture
Mainstream crossover
1995
search interest spikes
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
James Percelay, Monteria Ivey and Stephan Dweck, Snaps, William Morrow
1994
■
Elijah Wald, Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, Oxford University Press
2012
■
+ Cite a sourceWilliam Labov, The Art of Sounding and Signifying (regional names for the game)
1974
See also