February 22, 2000

jiggy

What do you know about the word "jiggy"? Lately, it is used in ...hip-hop lingo and has to do with...being really cool and having women, money, etc., but when I was a child, my father used this word all the time. He used it like "antsy," to mean excited or restless (but in an annoying way). I think he ONLY used the word when telling me to STOP being so "jiggy."

The slang term jiggy has been around at least since the 1930s. Originally it meant 'crazy', as in "He's gone completely jiggy." The senses your father knew, 'jittery; fidgety, restless; excitedly energetic' are still current today: "If I was too jiggy to hold the syringe, he'd shoot me up" (Radford & Crowley, Drug Agent, 1989).

But in the early 1990s jiggy took on the new meanings 'wonderful, excellent, enjoyable, exciting, stylish', as in "Get yourself some jiggy gear." Actually, jiggy can refer to anything that's very cool, so it could also mean 'having women, money, etc.'

Jiggy and get jiggy burst onto most people's radar in 1997 and 1998, right after the release of Will Smith's wildly popular rap song Gettin' Jiggy Wit It. In fact, a discussion of jiggy would not be complete without mention of some lyrics from his song:

On your mark ready set let's go
Dance floor pro I know you know
I go psycho when my new joint hit
Just can't sit
Gotta get jiggy wit it

In case you can't figure out the meaning of get jiggy, it means 'have fun, enjoy oneself totally'. More specifically, it means 'lose one's inhibitions, especially when dancing or performing music', as in "Latin groovers get jiggy at the mercury-hot Conga Room on Wilshire Boulevard" (L.A. Times, 1998). "When Ally McBeal's writers decided to have ...Calista Flockhart get jiggy with an imaginary dancing baby..." (People Magazine, 1998).

Slang has many ways to say the same thing. The phrase get jiggy (with it) is very close in meaning to an earlier (1970s) phrase get down (with it). What does "get" mean in these slang phrases? Connie Eble explains in her book Slang and Sociability: "Many (slang) phrases are built on verbs of generalized meaning such as do, get, make, and take. The verbs themselves contribute little to the specific referential meaning of expressions such as get a grip...get a life, ...get down...get outta here..."

There's no agreement on the origin of jiggy, but it may be from jig 'dance' or jiggle 'move with short, quick jerks'. A less likely origin is the highly offensive term jigaboo 'a black person'.

Carol