Entry · catalog no. 1237
square from Delaware
/ /ˌskwɛr frəm ˈdɛləˌwɛr/ /SKWAIR from DEL-uh-wair
phrase · Harlem, New York, with Philadelphia in the mix from the start · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A person with no feel for the music, the clothes, the language, or the moment; unhip in a way worth making a rhyme about.
“He showed up to the Savoy in a church suit talking about the weather. Square from Delaware.”
2.
Used teasingly or against oneself among friends, softening the insult into a running joke.
“Do not ask me what they are playing. I am a square from Delaware.”
Origin & Attribution
This comes out of Black jazz and jitterbug circles of the late 1930s, and it moved on the Black press before it moved anywhere else. The construction — a plain noun plus an absurd rhyming place name — was a whole small industry in that scene: a lane from Spokane, a killer from Manila, a home from Rome. Delaware is in there only because it rhymes; the state has nothing to do with it. The earliest dated print use found so far is a Philadelphia Tribune column of 11 November 1937, and Dan Burley used it in his Back Door Stuff column in the New York Amsterdam News on 27 May 1939, stacked with the rest of the rhyming set. Two corrections are worth making. This is not Cab Calloway's phrase: his Hepster's Dictionary carries plain square, along with icky, jeff, and unhep, but no Delaware entry. And it did not start with Fats Waller's 1940 record, which was catching a phrase already three years in circulation in the Black press.
1937
Earliest known print use, in a column in the Philadelphia Tribune, 11 November
1939
Dan Burley runs it in Back Door Stuff in the New York Amsterdam News, 27 May, alongside a lane from Spokane and a killer from Manila
1940
Fats Waller and His Rhythm record You Are A Square from Delaware, written by Leonard Feather, for Bluebird, and the phrase goes national
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem, New York, with Philadelphia in the mix from the start · 1930s
Spoken by
Black jazz musicians, jitterbugs, and Black newspaper columnists, then the wider swing audience
$SQUAREThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical89 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1937
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
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Citations & Sources
■
Barry Popik, Square from Delaware (slang), The Big Apple, 3 August 2019, citing Philadelphia Tribune, 11 November 1937, p. 8, and New York Amsterdam News, 27 May 1939, p. 20
reference
■
Fats Waller and His Rhythm, You Are A Square from Delaware, Bluebird B-10730, 1940, composed by Leonard Feather
record
■
+ Cite a sourceTom Dalzell, ed., The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English, Routledge, 2018
book
See also