Entry · catalog no. 2008
vines
/ vaɪnz /VYNZ
noun · Harlem / jazz circuit · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
Clothes; especially a suit (singular "vine").
“He had on the sharp vines — pressed, cuffed, and clean.”
Origin & Attribution
Harlem jive of the 1930s–40s for a suit of clothes ("vine," singular). Part of the same fashion-proud vocabulary that gave the zoot suit its era; a man's "vines" were his front to the world. Documented across the jive glossaries of Cab Calloway and Dan Burley.
1930s
Jive for a suit of clothes
1944
In Dan Burley's Handbook of Harlem Jive
1940s
Tied to the zoot-suit era
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Harlem / jazz circuit · 1940s
Spoken by
Black jazz-era speakers
$VINESThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Faded86 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
50/100
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive — book · 1944
web
■
+ Cite a sourceGlossary of jive talk (Calloway-era lexicon) — reference
web
See also