Entry · catalog no. 9771

woofing

/ ˈwʊfɪŋ /WOOF-ing

verb · northeast · 1930s

✓ Verified

Loud, boastful, teasing talk meant more for show than for truth — bluffing, signifying, or running your mouth to impress or provoke, without necessarily backing it up.

“Them two been woofing at each other all afternoon, but neither one gonna throw a punch.”

Origin & Attribution

Recorded in Zora Neale Hurston's glossary to "Story in Harlem Slang" (The American Mercury, 1942), where she set down the working vocabulary of 1930s and 40s Harlem. The word imitates a dog's bark — big noise, little bite — and long predates its later life in hip-hop battle culture.

1930

Mule Bone (Hurston & Hughes): "Stop woofing and pick a little tune" — written 1930, unpublished until 1991

1934

Hurston in Nancy Cunard's Negro anthology: "Rockefeller and Henry Ford was woofing at each other"

1964

Abrahams lists woofing as a name for playing the dozens

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The South

northeast · 1930s

Spoken by

Southern Black speakers; later Harlem streetcorner and hip-hop

$WOOFINThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Faded

92 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

62/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1934

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

■

Zora Neale Hurston, "Story in Harlem Slang" (with glossary) — short story · 1942

submitted

■

The American Mercury — magazine · 1942

submitted

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