General
righteous
What does righteous mean?
Used as emphatic praise, meaning real and proper.
"We had a righteous time at the dance."
Origin
1930s-40s Harlem jive slang, shifting the church word 'righteous' into secular praise meaning genuine and excellent. It appears in hepster glossaries of the Cab Calloway era and reflects jive's habit of repurposing everyday words.
Frequently asked questions
What does righteous mean in jive slang?
It means genuinely fine, excellent, or authentic, the real thing.
Where did the slang 'righteous' come from?
From 1930s-40s Harlem jive, which borrowed the church word and gave it a secular meaning of excellent.
Is this the same 'righteous' surfers used later?
It's the ancestor of it; the jive sense of 'excellent' passed down through generations of slang.
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