Entry · catalog no. 1281
the Chi
/ ðə ʃaɪ /thuh SHY
proper noun · Chicago, Illinois · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
Chicago, said by people who are from it. Pronounced shy, not chee and not kai. The definite article does work: the Chi is warmer and more inside than Chicago, and in Black usage it usually means the South and West Sides rather than the city as a civic whole. It carries pride and, depending on who is talking, a claim of having come through the place.
“Twenty years in Atlanta and I still tell people I''m from the Chi.”
Origin & Attribution
Here the archive corrects itself before anyone else does: Chi for Chicago is not a Black coinage and is not from hip hop. Green's Dictionary of Slang documents it from 1899 in white hobo and tramp argot — Josiah Flynt's Tramping with Tramps, and Jack London's The Road in 1907, which explicitly records the pronunciation as shy. It runs on through Carl Sandburg, Ring Lardner and W. R. Burnett's Little Caesar in 1929. What Black Chicago did was keep it after general American slang let it go, add the definite article, and make it an identity marker — the form carried through 1990s Chicago rap and named by Lena Waithe for her 2018 series about the South Side. Distinguish from Chi-town, which reads touristic now, and from Chiraq, which is a 2010s coinage many Chicagoans reject.
1899
Josiah Flynt''s Tramping with Tramps records Chi for Chicago in hobo argot
1907
Jack London''s The Road notes the pronunciation: "Chi (pronounced shy)"
2018
Lena Waithe''s The Chi premieres on Showtime, 7 January
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Midwest
Chicago, Illinois · 1990s
Spoken by
Black Chicago, South and West Sides
$THECHIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady127 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
77/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1899
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
@chitown
Chicago, IL
@detlex
Detroit, MI
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Josiah Flynt, Tramping with Tramps, p.356 — book · 1899
submitted
■
Jack London, The Road, p.126 — book · 1907
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceThe Chi, created by Lena Waithe, Showtime, 7 January — television · 2018
submitted
See also