Entry · catalog no. 1184
what's on the rail for the lizard
/ /wʌts ɔn də ˈreɪl fə də ˈlɪzəd/ /wuts on duh RAYL fuh duh LIZ-erd
interrogative phrase · Eatonville, Florida and the rural Black South; recorded in Harlem · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
A proposition, called after a woman passing on the street. The lizard is the man doing the asking; the rail is what she has laid out. Hurston glossed it flatly as a suggestion of moral turpitude, and she built the point into the story that carries it — the woman it is aimed at answers that a man back in Georgia asked a woman the same thing and drew ninety days for it. It is a solicitation, and everyone involved knew it was one.
“Hey, sugar — what's on the rail for the lizard?”
2.
More loosely, a demand to know what is in a thing for the speaker. Used where somebody has been asked to give up time, money, or trouble and wants the terms named before he agrees to anything.
“You keep asking me to run down there for you. What's on the rail for the lizard?”
Origin & Attribution
Black Southern speech, recorded twice in 1942 by Zora Neale Hurston. The setting she gives it is not Harlem but an Eatonville, Florida store porch, where a man calls it after a woman walking past. Hurston was a trained folklorist working her own home town, and she carried the phrase north into her Harlem story — which is why it is filed under Harlem slang and belongs to the rural Black South.
1942
Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (J. B. Lippincott): a man calls the phrase from a store porch after a woman walking past, in Eatonville, Florida
1942
Story in Harlem Slang, The American Mercury, July: the phrase appears in the story and again in the appended glossary, answered with the line about a judge giving a man ninety days
1994
American Heritage runs a piece under the title, and a mistaken reading of the phrase as a dinner special begins circulating
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Eatonville, Florida and the rural Black South; recorded in Harlem · 1940s
Spoken by
Black Southerners, chiefly men addressing women in public; carried into Harlem writing by Hurston
$WHATSOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical84 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
18/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1942
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.
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Citations & Sources
■
Zora Neale Hurston, Story in Harlem Slang, The American Mercury, July 1942, with appended glossary
magazine · printed
■
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, J. B. Lippincott, 1942
book · printed
■
+ Cite a sourceGreen's Dictionary of Slang, entry lizard, n., recording both 1942 Hurston citations and no others
dictionary · online
See also