Entry · catalog no. 4214
tenderoni
/ /ˌtɛndəˈroʊni/ /ten-duh-ROH-nee
noun · Harlem · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
A young, good-looking person, most often a young woman, sometimes a man. Said admiringly, with an undertone of youth and inexperience — tender rather than seasoned. In the Bobby Brown usage it shades toward the good one, the one you do not play with.
“And if you find a tenderoni that is right for you, make it official, give her your love.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem jive of the 1940s, carried by the Black press. The first print is Dan Burley in the New York Amsterdam News of 22 December 1945 — "Macaroni rhymes with Tenderoni and Boots Marshall knows what is the score" — the same Burley who wrote the Original Handbook of Harlem Jive the year before. Cassell dates the word to the 1980s and is wrong by thirty-seven years. Michael Jackson is often said to have coined it in P.Y.T. in 1982; he did not write those lyrics, James Ingram did, and Jackson own account in Moonwalk is that he liked the code in them. What 1982 did was revive it. Bobby Brown Roni, out December 1988, made it a hit word, and Destiny Child still had it in 2004. One correction on the receipts: the tenderoni song is Roni, not Every Little Step. Both are real Bobby Brown singles and both are dated right in most tellings, but the word is in Roni.
1945
First print: Dan Burley in the New York Amsterdam News
1982
Revived in P.Y.T., written by James Ingram, on Thriller
1988
Bobby Brown Roni makes it a hit word
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem · 1940s
Spoken by
Harlem jive speakers via the Black press, then Black pop and New Jack Swing
$TENDERThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded81 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
45/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1945
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
■
New York Amsterdam News, Dan Burley — newspaper · 22 Dec 1945, p. 27
researched
■
"P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" — Michael Jackson, Thriller, written by James Ingram and Quincy Jones — song · 1982
song
■
"Roni" — Bobby Brown, Don't Be Cruel, written by Kenneth Babyface Edmonds — song · 27 Dec 1988
song
■
+ Cite a source"Hey Ladies" — Destiny's Child — song · 2004
song
See also