Entry · catalog no. 1331
the Roger Rabbit
/ /ðə ˈrɒdʒər ˈræbɪt/ /thuh ROJ-ur RAB-it
noun phrase · Black club circuit, coast to coast · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
A hip-hop social dance done traveling backwards: the body bounces and the legs kick back one at a time while the arms swing loosely across the front, the whole thing deliberately rubbery.
“She did the Roger Rabbit backwards across the floor and never lost the beat.”
Origin & Attribution
A Black social dance of the late 1980s, named for the loose-limbed title character of the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). It belongs to the same wave of hip-hop club dances as the Cabbage Patch and the Running Man, made and spread in Black clubs, house parties and roller rinks and then picked up by music video and daytime television. The name is borrowed from a cartoon; the movement is not.
1988
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is released and lends the dance its name
1989
The dance is standard in Black clubs alongside the Cabbage Patch and the Running Man
1990
Carried onto television and into music video during the hip-hop dance boom
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Black club circuit, coast to coast · 1980s
Spoken by
Black club and party dancers; hip-hop crews
$THEROGThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady38 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
44/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1988
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Robert Zemeckis, dir., Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Touchstone Pictures — source of the name
film · 1988
■
+ Cite a sourceGucci Crew II, The Cabbage Patch, So Def, So Fresh, So Stupid — companion record from the same dance wave
album track · 1987
See also