The Origin of Hip
ED BOYER
George Robinson, approaching his 80s, was helping his wife with her boots one recent winter.
For some reason, she was uncomfortable, and putting them on became a challenge. Finally, after some struggle, the boots were in place. Robinson, a resident of Detroit, then looked up at her and said: ‘‘There, honey. I’ve got you hipped and booted.’’
‘‘Hipped and booted.’’ The phrase resonated. I remember older members of my family and their contemporaries saying that it was the slang in the black community in North Detroit in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
I had always been fascinated by the expression because, as I confessed in an earlier column, I have an abiding interest in etymology–especially the origin of slang terms that have become part of the language.
For years, I have heard students of slang say that the origins of ‘‘hip’’ were lost in the mists of history. The term just arose, somehow magically, and became one of the most enduring expressions in English. Perhaps ‘‘OK’’ is the only other American English term to become more universal.
People now in their 60s and 70s who grew up in an area of Detroit called ‘‘Ducktown’’ or near Cleveland Junior High School tell me that ‘‘I’m hipped and booted’’ evolved into an expression they constantly used: ‘‘I’m hipped to the fact and booted to the crack.’’
That expression was current as Europe careened toward what would become World War II, and it was gradually shortened to ‘‘I’m hipped.’’ It was but a short step from ‘‘I’m hipped’’ to ‘‘I’m hip.’’
A little history is needed here. On a recent trip to the family homestead in Detroit, I decided to search in earnest for any information that could shed light on the origins of ‘‘hip.’’ I had heard the stories about ‘‘hipped and booted’’ and ‘‘hipped to the fact and booted to the crack’’ for many years. But whenever I would tell those stories, they were always met with severe skepticism.
A few years ago, I talked about those expressions with a colleague at The Times who dismissed them out of hand. ‘‘Hip came from jazz musicians,’’ she insisted. ‘‘It came straight from the jazz joints.’’
There can be no debate with ignorance, I decided, and let the matter drop. But slang rarely has a neat, logical birth. The argument was once made that ‘‘rap’’ was simply a shortening of ‘‘rapport.’’ That kind of etymology simply does not work. I was around for the birth of ‘‘rap,’’ and I know that in the 1950s when guys were not seriously ‘‘hitting on’’ a girl, they said they were just making a light ‘‘rap.’’
There have been as many misconceptions about ‘‘hip’’ as there have been about ‘‘rap.’’
Here’s the story as I get it from my senior citizen informants in Detroit.
It began with me once naively saying that no one knew the origin of ‘‘hip.’’ They looked puzzled. They all certainly knew the slang’s origin.
According to them, it started with what might have been a most unhip activity. Back in the 1930s, Detroit, like many other big cities, had large marshes and creeks where neighborhood boys would fish or gather frogs.
Many of these lads were not long removed from the South, and fishing was a way of life to them. The best fishing was done in hip boots and waders that allowed them to go out into the center of these marshes and creeks.
Wearing hip boots and waders meant you were ready, totally prepared. That term left the marshes and wound up among teenagers as a way of saying they were ready for whatever came along. So, a common exchange went something like this:
‘‘How’re you doing, man?’’
‘‘I’m hipped and booted.’’
That little bit of linguistic history has what I have come to recognize as the ring of authenticity.
In contemporary slang, that would have been the equivalent of saying something or someone is ‘‘phat’’ or ‘‘dope.’’
When the expression became ‘‘I’m hipped to the fact and booted to the crack,’’ many parents would punish their children for saying it in the house or around adults. Hip boots, you see, come right up the backside, and the ‘‘crack’’ in that expression was not a reference to be made in polite company.
From that meaning of being ready for anything, the expression gradually evolved to mean that you were in the know, aware.
I can understand how there could be so much confusion about the origin of ‘‘hip.’’ What is easy to forget in this age of instant communication is that some slang terms in the 1930s were confined to relatively small neighborhoods and only slowly made their way out. I have spoken to Detroiters in their seventies who did not live in ‘‘Ducktown’’ or near Cleveland, and they say they have never heard the expression ‘‘hipped to the fact and booted to the crack.’’
If the rough time periods I’ve been given are correct, it may have taken four or five years for ‘‘hipped to the fact and booted to the crack’’ to become simply ‘‘hipped’’ and make its way out of ‘‘Ducktown’’ and North Detroit.
Now I know the legendary ‘‘hep cat’’ Cab Calloway wrote a slang dictionary distorting ‘‘hip,’’ making it ‘‘hep,’’ back in the 1940s. He did not know what he was talking about.
‘‘Hep’’ is a totally made-up word that could have come from a common complaint that hip was a body part–not an attitude.
But the only people who would have said that simply were not ‘‘hipped to the fact.’’
Ed Boyer can be reached at 310-836-8680 or by e-mail at edjboyer@ca.rr.com