Entry · catalog no. 2013
the Hawk
/ ðə hɔːk /thuh-HAWK
noun · Chicago / Midwest · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
The biting cold winter wind, especially in Chicago.
“Button up — the Hawk is out there tonight.”
Origin & Attribution
A Black folk personification of the cold wind, "the Hawk" (from "Mister Hawkins"), long current in Chicago and other northern cities. Lou Rawls made it national in the spoken intro to "Dead End Street" (1967), describing the Hawk coming off Lake Michigan "just like a giant razor blade." The Great Migration carried Southern Black families into that cold — and named it.
mid-1900s
Personified winter wind in Northern Black speech
1967
Lou Rawls' "Dead End Street" spreads it nationwide
now
Still Chicago shorthand for brutal cold
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Midwest
Chicago / Midwest · 1960s
Spoken by
Black Chicagoans
$THEHAWThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady86 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
62/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1940
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
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See also