Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) a nervous person.

1962		P. Crump Burn, Killer, Burn! 352: ‘Look, officer,’ the blue-clad jitterbug corrected.
2005		Prison Slang Mommyblogger mydogharriet.blogspot.com 23 Sept. 🌐 If you press her friend she might give you the grapes on your little jitterbug.

2. (also jitter) a fan of swing music; also attrib.

1934		Cab Calloway ‘Jitter Bug’ 🎵 Hear this fat boy blowing his horn; / He’s been a bug since the day he was born [...] Don’t you worry, you just mug, / You’ll always be a jitter bug!
1939		L.A. Times 7 May 51/4: On Conrad Wiedell [...] Portrait of a jitterbug. ‘Most of these cats are jitters, They can get in the groove, sure, but they’ve got no routine’.
1943		Kerouac letter 7 Apr. in Charters I (1995) 60: The half-back-whoremaster-alemate-scullion-jitterbug-jazz critic.
1944		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 3 June 10: A lot of these jitterbug husbands smoke reefers at home.
1953		L. Durst Jives of Dr. Hepcat (1989) 7: Let’s look in on a couple of of jitterbugs talking about their hair and a certain way that hair is being fixed today. [...] called cooked.
1962		P. Crump Burn, Killer, Burn! 94: That jitterbug and bop noise don’t frenzy me a bit.
1981		H. Gould Fort Apache, The Bronx 101: Like those jitterbug World War II dudes, everything was loose.

3. (US, also jit) an adolescent who is naïve or foolish.

1940		B. Appel People Talk (1972) 438: They called us jitterbugs because we wore sixteen-inch cuffs and striped sweaters at the dances.
1967		T.C. Bambara ‘Playing with Punjab’ in Gorilla, My Love (1972) 71: The realer type people who get right out there in the street with all the jitterbugs and take your side against the landlords and the cops.
1970		A. Young Snakes (1971) 71: All you wanna do lately is run around with these old so-called hip niggers, these little jitterbugs.
1986		L. Heinemann Paco’s Story (1987) 80: And right out of nowhere this jitterbug waltzed up to the card table.
2000		Other Side of the Wall: Prisoner’s Dict. July 🌐 Jitterbug Young, juvenile, troublemaker. Or, ‘jit.’.

4. (US black) a voluble, indiscreet person, a chatterer; also attrib.

1954		W.G. Smith South Street 105: ‘I ain’t one of them goddamn jitterbugs tryin’ to make time in a hurry, or tryin’ to jive you, or nothin’ like that’.
1971–2		C. Shafer ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 208: jitterbug, n. – someone who is trying to impress others.
1977		P. Hamill Flesh and Blood (1978) 26: Bobby, don’t pull any wise-ass jitterbug bullshit on him. He is bad.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 243: jitterbug [...] 2. One who talks too much or talks nonsense.

5. (US black) a youth who lives a street life but is not invariably a criminal.

1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 194: What would a jitterbug know about my personal life?
1973		J.B. Rubinstein City Police 232: You know what them fuckin’ jitterbugs do to you for no reason at all?

6. (US) a gang member, thus attrib.

1971		R. Woodley Dealer 100: ‘I was born and raised in New York. I was a jitterbug, you know, a gang fighter’.
1977		E. Torres Q&A 162: ‘There was a jitterbug gang in Spanish Harlem [...] The Sinners, me and six guys. We were a small crew, but we whaled the shit out of everybody’.