Entry · catalog no. 4305
toast
/ /toʊst/ /TOHST
noun · nationwide · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
A long story-poem carried in Black oral tradition and performed from memory — rhymed, boastful, often profane, told on corners, in barbershops, bars, and cells. Its heroes are the Signifying Monkey, Stagolee, Shine, and the Titanic; its craft of rhyme and swagger runs straight into rap.
“Old heads could run a toast twenty minutes long and never drop a rhyme.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American oral tradition, deep in the twentieth century and older, from the Southern folktale and the dozens up through the urban corner. Bruce Jackson collected the toasts in "Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me" (1974); Roger Abrahams had documented them in Philadelphia a decade earlier. Jackson called toasts the starting point for rap, in both the poetry and the way it was performed in public.
1964
Abrahams documents toasts in Philadelphia
1974
Bruce Jackson publishes the classic collection
1980s
Recognized as a direct root of rap
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
nationwide · 1960s
Spoken by
Black men in barbershops, bars, corners, and prisons
$TOASTThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady126 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
1900
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
■
Bruce Jackson, Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me (Harvard University Press)
1974
■
+ Cite a sourceRoger D. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle
1964
See also