The origins of the adjective "tight" meaning "good" plus origin of "in the black"

Factual Questions
1

As a schoolteacher I’m around adolescents a lot and I sometimes involuntarily pick up their slang. Often the kids I know use the word “tight” to describe something good, as in: “Tight shoes, man,” or “That band is extra tight.”

At home I used “tight” to describe something good (a movie, IIRC) and my wife got offended. She claimed that “tight” meaning “good” came from older men describing young women’s nether orifices, as in, “That girl is extra tight down there.” I thought it seemed more likely that “tight”=“good” came from critics describing musicians’ performances, or possibly from back when (literally) tight clothes were fashionable. I checked Safire’s columns and a few other etymology sources but could find nothing on this. Anybody else have an idea?

Also, years ago I attended a seminar on language and race, and the very first example the presenters gave of “racist language” were the expressions “in the red” and “in the black.” They claimed that this referred to American colonists’ experiences with Native slaves versus African slaves – see, the Natives made bad slaves, so having too many of those was bad for business, hence “in the red” meant “business is bad.” Change things around for “in the black” and you get the idea.

I thought this was absurd on its face and I said so. I pointed out that columns in accounting ledgers were printed with two inks, red for expenses and black for income, which explained the origins of the phrases. I was met with the following rejoinder: “Aha! But WHY did they choose those colors for their ledgers?”

My reply: “Because red and black show up really well on white paper and are easily distinguishable, as opposed to blue and black or brown and red.”

Where do people come up with this stuff? I understand that many common phrases are racist in origin and that one runs the risk of offending people if one uses them, but honestly, these corny and twisted explanations for “in the red” and “in the black” are just ridiculous. A Google search for those two phrases plus the word “racist” turned up nothing. I wonder if they just pulled the “origins” out of thin air?

Anyway, if anyone has heard alternate etymologies for “in the red” and “in the black” that has anything to do with race or skin color, I would love to know about it.

2

I don’t know really about the ‘tight’ references you give. I know about being ‘tight’ with someone meaning good friends. Never heard the ‘tight shoes, man’ one. But, as a musician, I’ve used the other reference many times, and it doesn’t really mean that they’re good. When I use tight referring to a band, it has to do with their timing and obvious comfortability with each other. No mistakes, no looking for cues. Tight as in ‘not sloppy’. Not winging it. just my two cents. So, I’ve contradicted myseld sort of. It does mean the band is good, but I could not like the music of a band and still say their tight. Like, I hate jazz, but “man, those guys in that band LMT Connection, they are tight as hell.”

3

Not familiar with teenage slang (my kids are only 5 & 8, their slang includes “poop”) but red & black originates in accounting as you describe (although red is reserved only for negative numbers, which are exceptions in double entry accounting; both expenses and revenues are positive numbers and in black; revenues minus expenses = income and is noteworthy when negative). I’ll bet tight is a bleedover from the musicians’ slang.

But remember that lots of youth slang has no rational etymology. Sometimes a word just starts meaning something totally different that its denotation.

4

The people to blame for this are the ones that labeled us either “white” or “black”. As colors go, they’re complete opposites. That doesn’t help race relations. Also, I’ve never seen a person that was actually white (albinos get close), or actually black (somalis can get pretty close). People should be called whatever their race calls itself, or called itself I guess. Color coding races is always a bad idea, it’s bound to create problems currently as well as later.

Enough of that.

The first time I ever heard of the “tight” thing I couldn’t exactly tell what it meant in context. The guy said “Man, I gotta get tight for spring break!” I was more than a bit confused. As I heard the term used more often, I realized that it had the same loose definition as snappy, crisp, high quality, desirable, etc.

The first time I heard “In the black” was at a sales meeting in late November. Our Sales Manager refered to the Friday after Thanksgiving as “Black Friday”. He explained that that’s the day that a business has to go from “in the red” to a positive profit, otherwise they’re screwed. I thought that november was a bit late for going positive, but at least it explained his analogy.

I’m currently in a support group for overusage of the " symbol and the comma, please accept my apologies.:wink:

5

Comes from accounting. When you made money it was written in black ink…when you lost it was written in red ink.

Even some printing calculators used red and black in the same way.

6

I’ve heard and used “tight” a many times… it’s kind of going out of style now. Anyways, I don’t know the etymology of it, and neither do most of the people that say it. In the sense you described, it carries no sexual connotation at all, and IMHO shouldn’t be considered offensive. The phrase “tight work” (similar to “good job”) is used a lot, which goes along with what you suggested about the musicians.

7

Tight = very good/nice, cool,

That was a tight movie. Those are tight shoes. Etc.

I kow people have been using it for 10+ years.

8

Bit of a hijack, but there’s a nice little pipe tune called Back In Black - written to commemorate an Australian pipeband (Victoria Police) finally getting back into a sound fiscal position after an expensive trip to the Worlds competition in Scotland.