Entry · catalog no. 6203
trickeration
/ /ˌtrɪkəˈreɪʃən/ /trik-uh-RAY-shun
noun · Harlem, New York · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
Showing out — strutting your stuff with flash and a little swagger.
“He came down the aisle full of trickeration, hat cocked, cane swinging.”
Origin & Attribution
Cab Calloway cut a record called Trickeration in 1931 and defined it himself as struttin'' your stuff, muggin'' lightly and politely. Harlem jive built from trick plus a mock-formal -eration ending, the humor sitting in dressing a street strut up in Latinate clothes.
1931
Cab Calloway records Trickeration
1930s
Current in Harlem swing talk
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem, New York · 1930s
Spoken by
Harlem, New York
$TRICKEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Dormant95 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
22/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1931
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
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See also