Hepster Dictionary

[skinnychik]

I love the scene in "Swing Kids" in which they're practicing slang terms and trying to use them in sentences. I'm sure you all would be able to create a lengthy collection, so what phrases do you know, and can you use them in a sentence?

faust: an ugly girl
"Did you like that faust you were hanging out with last night?"

icky: not hip, boring
"Here come two ickies now. Did their mothers dress them?"

hepcat: someone who knows everything about Swing
"I wish some hepcat would add more vocab to this list!"

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

I love the scene in "Swing Kids" in which they're practicing slang terms and trying to use them in sentences. I'm sure you all would be able to create a lengthy collection, so what phrases do you know, and can you use them in a sentence?

faust: an ugly girl
"Did you like that faust you were hanging out with last night?"

icky: not hip, boring
"Here come two ickies now. Did their mothers dress them?"

hepcat: someone who knows everything about Swing
"I wish some hepcat would add more vocab to this list!"

Cab Calloway's guide is a hoot (the one I think they were reading), and his is the only "officially published" one I know, but I've harly Ever heard most of his in usage in jazz & swingn song lyrics. I don't know if most of his were local to his area: http://www.swingvirginia.com/reading/hepsterdictionary.html

Some off the top of my head used more regularly: Wow so many of these are drug related - no I'm not a user!

Viper: Pot or opium smoker

Kickin' the Gong Around: smoking/snorting drugs, probably mostly in Chinatown where I guess they were more prevalent at the time.

"What's the deal, MacNeal?" / "What's knittin', kitten?" / "What's cookin', good lookin'?": salutations.

LID - Hat

PINCH / PINCHED - Steal / stolen

Reet / Allreet - alright.

Yard dog - a wild-sounding jazz horn player.



There's tons more, I'm forgetting them all now

Swing High,
- C H

 

[LizzieMaine]

There's an excellent book that came out a few years back called "Straight From The Fridge, Dad!", compiled by one Max Decharne, which gives a comprehensive overview of the different varieties of righteous jive. Some of it goes as far back as the twenties, and other entries date as late as the beatnik-era '50s, but the bulk of the entries are 30's-40's hepcat slang.

So if yer hep to beatin' your chops, this one's straight from the cookhouse -- just fall in an' dig the happenin's, flap yo' ears, an' don't be a goon from Saskatoon -- glom yo' glims an' get hip to the ship -- an' keep yo' lamps on the prowl for it!

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

There's an excellent book that came out a few years back called "Straight From The Fridge, Dad!", compiled by one Max Decharne, which gives a comprehensive overview of the different varieties of righteous jive. Some of it goes as far back as the twenties, and other entries date as late as the beatnik-era '50s, but the bulk of the entries are 30's-40's hepcat slang.

So if yer hep to beatin' your chops, this one's straight from the cookhouse -- just fall in an' dig the happenin's, flap yo' ears, an' don't be a goon from Saskatoon -- glom yo' glims an' get hip to the ship -- an' keep yo' lamps on the prowl for it!

lol lol lol Oh that book is so Mine! Thanks


Swing High,
- C H

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Crazy!

Maybe if we all learned the lingo and used it all the time we could revive this jive?

 

[Absinthe_1900]

http://www.hyzercreek.com/harry.htm

From the back of Harry "The Hipster" Gibson's "Boogie Woogie in Blue".

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Lord Buckley!...

If all you "Lords and Ladies" want to talk like a swingin' hepcat - you've got to spend some time with Lord Buckley - the Hip Aristocrat!

Hipsters, Flipsters and finger-poppin daddys - any Lord Buckley record has enough sweet swingin' hip talk for any cool cat or kitty to dig from here to endsville. Man, that cat is the swingin'ist, most sweet hipster that ever clicked his heels on the lovin' floorboards of life. That cat was the coolest daddycat that ever was!... ya dig?

-dixon cannon

 

[Baron Kurtz]

A couple from Lester:

Bob Crosby = a narcotics policeman

Bing Crosby = supposing there are two narcs in the bar, Bing is the second one

"Does madam burn?" = Can your wife cook?

There are of course many more from Lester's unique vocabulary. He apparently was the origin of a remarkable amount of hipster slang ...

bk

 

[Haversack]

What are the dates on these phrase lists? Reason I ask is that some of these expressions are pretty common in a pair of 1942 Paramount movies: _The Palm Beach Story_ and _Star Spangled Rhythm_.

Haversack.

 

[tallyho]

A good movie for 40s slang is "the bachelor and the bobbysoxer" with Cary Grant and I think Shirley Temple. "You remind me of a man"

 

[magneto]

Cab Calloway's guide is a hoot (the one I think they were reading), and his is the only "officially published" one I know,
...

Oooh... you *need* to look up (the writings that is) Mezz Mezzrow. Apparently he was the one who came up with all the rhyming and "viper" slang (which is why the good smokin' stuff was called "the mighty Mezz"..If you've heard the song "When you're a viper"--most popular by some girl singer, can't remember the name--that phrase is in it.)

One term I just read is "Olive Oil!" for good-by (I assume a corruption of "au revoir"). And of course "Janes" for girls.

 

[AcmeNews]

Cop slang

Some of my favorite slang comes from old police culture. Someof it is common, some made big in Hollywood, some a bit obscure. Off the top of my head:

Gunsel=Hood armed with a gat.
Flatfoot=a foot-beat cop.
Dick=detective, especially homicide.
Throw down=an extra, unregistered gun used to frame suspects (only for the corrupt cops, of course)

In St. Louis, the term "Car Clodding" is still often used. It's an old school term for tampering with an automobile (burglary).

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

Oooh... you *need* to look up (the writings that is) Mezz Mezzrow. Apparently he was the one who came up with all the rhyming and "viper" slang (which is why the good smokin' stuff was called "the mighty Mezz"..If you've heard the song "When you're a viper"--most popular by some girl singer, can't remember the name--that phrase is in it.)

One term I just read is "Olive Oil!" for good-by (I assume a corruption of "au revoir"). And of course "Janes" for girls.

HA that looks great; Thanks Magneto! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806512059/002-0267355-6810467 (And yes, great song, I've got it by some fellow, sounds like Fats Waller but it's not.)


Swing High,
- C H

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

Some of my favorite slang comes from old police culture. Someof it is common, some made big in Hollywood, some a bit obscure. Off the top of my head:

Gunsel=Hood armed with a gat.
Flatfoot=a foot-beat cop.
Dick=detective, especially homicide.
Throw down=an extra, unregistered gun used to frame suspects (only for the corrupt cops, of course)

In St. Louis, the term "Car Clodding" is still often used. It's an old school term for tampering with an automobile (burglary).

That's funny. Yes, went on a Film Noir kick last year & started reading Raymond Chandler, there're some good ones there for sure, though from the other side of the tracks from the "hepster" slang.


Swing High,
- C H

 

[Mike in Seattle]

Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire is another great 40's jive slang movie.

My favorite from the above is still "Shove in yer clutch" meaning hit the road.

 

[Haversack]

AcmeNews Wrote:
"Some of my favorite slang comes from old police culture. Someof it is common, some made big in Hollywood, some a bit obscure. Off the top of my head:
Gunsel=Hood armed with a gat."

"Gunsel" has become to mean a gunman, body guard, torpedo, etc. due to the writing of Dashiell Hammett and his emulators in the hard-boiled detective genre. "Gunsel" or "Gonzel" originally meant the "young male companion of an older homosexual man". Hammett first used in in his short story, _The Black Mask_ as a joke on his editor. His editor had previously editied some language in a different story so Hammett set up an innocuous phrase, (working a gooseberry lay, i.e. stealing clothes off a clothesline), with the implication that it had a sexual meaning, while at the same time using the term "gunsel" casually. His editor jumped on the gooseberry and completely ignored gunsel. Hammett later used gunsel in _The Maltese Falcon_ to describe Wilmer Cook. (Use of which also carried over into the movie versions as well.) Other writers, not knowing its original meaning or blind to the relationship between Gutman and Cook, took the word to mean "gunman" and thus changed its meaning.

Haversack

 

[The Wingnut]

I'm less of a fan of swing jive than I am of crime fiction style slang. To me, the latter seems less over the top, and more integrated with modern language, likely because it was featured prominently in movies at the time and as such had more staying power.

As with anything, you can overdo this stuff and sound as if you're trying way too hard. Subtlety and delivery is the key. Painting an overall accurate picture of the times works far better than going way off the deep end of a niche culture.

 

[carebear]

I was trying to find a link but there's more hepster speak in a couple minutes in the "High Pants, Fast Talking" scene from Family Guy, than in most period movies.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Has nobody heard of the Hip Aristocrat???

Lord Buckley?!! Come on, throw me a bone!!!

(George Harrison's song 'Crackerbox Palace' was written about Lord Buckley.

..the sweetest, ever-lovin', cool daddy-cat,
Dixon Cannon

 

[AcmeNews]

Wow

Haversack, that's terrific trivia. Funny how a good writer can have such influence on pop-culture language.

I still hear local cops using the term occassionally to describe thugs who carry guns.