Entry · catalog no. 1963
waves
/ /weɪvz/ /WAYVZ
noun · U.S., nationwide within Black communities, with strong roots in the U.S. South a · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
A hairstyle worn mostly by Black men in which short, coily hair is trained through brushing, moisturizing, and compression until it lies down in a rippling, circular pattern across the scalp, resembling the ripples on water; also called 360 waves when the pattern runs unbroken around the entire head. The style is built and held through a daily discipline — brushing in a fixed direction, applying pomade or grease, and compressing the hair overnight or between sessions with a durag or wave cap — and is treated in-community as a mark of grooming, patience, and self-respect rather than a passing l
“He ran his palm over his fade and asked his cousin, 'you checking my waves or what?' before the durag came back off.”
Origin & Attribution
The style and its name grew out of Black grooming culture in barbershops and households across the U.S., where men used brushes, pomade, and cloth head coverings to train coily hair into a flattened, rippling pattern. The word itself is descriptive — the pattern was likened to water — and the practice of covering the head to set a hairstyle traces to earlier head-wrap traditions in Black communities before being adapted specifically for wave-training in the 20th century. Some retailers and blogs push the style's origin back to Egypt or generic 'ancient African' grooming, but the wave hairstyle
1930s
Durags and stocking caps used by Black men to train and hold wave patterns become common household grooming tools
1960s-1970s
Wave culture becomes a fixture in Black barbershops alongside the Black Pride movement
1990s-2000s
Rappers including Nelly, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent bring durags and the waves look into mainstream visibility
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
U.S., nationwide within Black communities, with strong roots in the U.S. South a · 1960s
Spoken by
Black men and boys who wear the style, and the barbershops, families, and hip-hop culture that popularized and maintaine
$WAVESThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring96 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
78/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1930
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
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
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Wave culture exploded in Black barbershops during the 1960s and 1970s
grooming history article
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In the 1990s, durags were further popularized by rappers like Jay-Z, Nelly, and 50 Cent
Wikipedia, Durag entry
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+ Cite a sourceWaves are a hairstyle that originated in the black community, its name referencing the way that the hair is styled in a wavy pattern
durag terminology glossary
See also