August 3, 2000

mack

My daughter recently returned from college in Wyoming using the word mack as in: "She was going to 'mack' my boyfriend." This, she explained, meant outrageous flirtation, perhaps including some hugging and kissing, with intent to steal her guy. Apparently the meaning falls short of actual seduction. How new is this term, and how did it develop?

Mack has only been used by college kids to mean 'hit on' or 'kiss' for the last fifteen years or so, but the verb is a lot older than that.

The word mack goes all the way back to the Dutch word makelaar for 'a broker', and comes to us through the French maquereau for 'a pimp'. The word is seen in English as early as the 15th century: "Nighe his house dwellyed a maquerel or bawd" (Caxton, Cato Magnus, 1483). This use continued into the 18th century.

In the 19th century, the form mack appears with the meaning of 'a pimp' or 'to pimp', but the form did not become common until the 20th century: "Your broad...starts signifying about your not having a license to mack" (Wepman, The Life, 1964). During this period, the first references to mack daddies, or 'successful pimps', are found in African-American rhymed recitations.

Also during the 1960s, mack developed a second meaning of 'the sweet talk a pimp uses with prositutes', as in: "The pimp...by his lively and persuasive rapping ("macking" is also used in this context) has acquired a stable of girls" (Trans-action VI, 1969).

Later, mack was extended to refer to any flirtatious talk with someone of the opposite sex: "I don't want you women to be macking with the brothers if they ain't tending to business" (Wolfe, Radical Chic, 1970). While this sense of mack was originally African-American slang, it was introduced to the mainstream in the 1980s and 1990s through rap music: "...think they be mackin' but they actin'/ Who they attractin' with that line?" (Notorious B.I.G., Big Poppa, 1995).

Since the mid 1990s, mack has been primarily college slang, used by teens and twenty-somethings to talk about flirting or kissing. It is often found in the construction mack on, probably by analogy with the phrase "hit on." Mack can still be used as a noun to refer to someone who is good at "hooking up" with members of the opposite sex, probably through truncation of mack daddy, which, these days, refers more often to smooth-talking teenage boys than it does to pimps.

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