Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US black) sexual intercourse, also a sex partner.

1928		R. Fisher Walls Of Jericho 54: Figgerin’ on a jive already – the doggone dickty hound.
1939		Cab Calloway ‘For the Last Time I Cried Over You’ 🎵 Solid M-O, man, but that’s the last time for that jive.
1971		H.E. Roberts Third Ear n.p.: jive n. […] 6. a man with many girlfriends.

2. (orig. US black) nonsense, rubbish, insincere, deceitful or pretentious talk [note Burley, Orig. Handbook of Harlem Jive (1944): ‘Jive is a distortion of that staid, old, respectable English word “jibe” — jibber — speak fast and inarticulately, chatter [...] Jibberish — unintelligible speech, meaningless sounds, jargon, blundering or ungrammatical talk’; he dates it to Chicago, 1921; Mezzrow & Wolfe, Really the Blues (1946): ‘The word jive probably comes from the old English word jibe, out of which came the words jibberish and gibberish, describing sound without meaning, speech that isn’t intelligible’; Mezzrow further suggests, quoting black journalist Earl Conrad, that ‘Jive talk may have been originally a kind of “pig Latin” that the slaves talked with each other, a code – when they were in the presence of whites’. Note that jive, swing music is SE].

1926		Frankie ‘Half-Pint’ Jaxon ‘Hannah Fell in Love with my Piano’ 🎵 Well, you’ll never do nothing like that to me! / I can’t stand that kind of a jive!
1928		R. Fisher Walls Of Jericho 94: Judge. Humph. So that was his jive. Huh. Judge. [Ibid.] 301: jive: pursuit in love or any device thereof. Usually flattery with intent to win [...] this word implies [...] deceit.
1938		Fats Waller [song title] Don’t Try Your Jive on Me.
1940		E.F. Frazier Negro Youth xxi: ‘I haven’t read a book since I graduated last year [...] you can keep that reading ‘jibe’’.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 37: I used to hear a lot of medical jive when I apprenticed in my uncle’s drugstore.
1957		Kerouac letter 28 Apr. in Charters II (1999) 29: And of course Ed I visited Notre Dame, Montmartre, etc. all that jive.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 156: Mama, yu oughta stop talkin thet junky jive.
1971		R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 58: ‘I let her stay temporarily, but she keeps on with her jive and so I decide to teach her something’.
1977		(con. 1960s) Nicholson & Smith Spend, Spend, Spend (1978) 87: They were giving us all that jive.
1986		R.G. Barrett Godson 328: ‘Hail Mary and all that jive’.
1988		R.R. Moore ‘Signifyin’ Monkey’ 🎵 But he drug his ass back to the jungle more dead than alive. / Just to run into that little monkey and some more of his signifying jive!
1993		T. Jones Pugilist at Rest 34: Just a lot of Mickey Mouse jive – push-ups and forced marches.
2006		G. Pelecanos Night Gardener 247: Some kind of jive about insubordination.
2018		(con. 1963) L. Berney November Road 29: A priest comforted his flock on the steps of the cathedral [...] The usual jive.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 89: [S]he beats the drum for civil rights and all that jive.

3. (US) Afro-American slang, esp. as coined in Harlem and thence used by jazz musicians; also attrib.

1938		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 15 Jan. 17/2: Listen to the typewriter translate the jive of the avenue into swing talk on paper.
1940		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 26 Oct. 20: [G]iving me a pat on the back as being ‘America’s leading jive writer’.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 220: Jive [...] is not only a strange linguistic mixture of dream and deed; it’s a whole new attitude to life.
1951		L. Brown Iron City 25: Zach here don’t know that jailhouse jive.
1965		H. Rhodes Chosen Few (1966) 32: He talks a lot of jive and keeps a bunch a’ broads runnin’ after him on liberty.
1970		Grateful Dead ‘Candy Man’ 🎵 I come in from Memphis / where I learned to talk the jive.
1983		G. Tate ‘Ramm-El-Zee vs. K-Rob’ in Flyboy in the Buttermilk (1992) 94: Walking that razor’s edge between go-go jive and rap’s flip side.
1992		T. Williams Crackhouse 17: Surrounded by the sounds of jive-talking rappers from radios, kids hollering out the rules of street games.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 91: Shouts overlapped [...] some nuggets in rebop and jive.
2010		IOL News (Western Cape) 18 Oct. 🌐 When flight attendants were unable to communicate with a pair of jive-talking hipsters, Billingsley’s character volunteered o translate, saying, ‘I talk jive’.

4. (US) any thing, stuff, goings-on, situation.

1938		‘Sl. among Nebraska Negroes’ in AS XIII:4 Dec. 317/1: Hip me to the jive! and lace my boots! mean ‘put me wise’. Thus to be hipped or to have one’s boots laced is to be aware of a situation.
1940		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 7 Dec. 20: That mink jive she was laying was worth a solid G and a half.
1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 17: The banter laid her stealers on her flappers, and booted her to the jive that the skull was trying to drop a hype on her.
1953		E. Hunter ‘Vicious Circle’ Jungle Kids (1967) 32: How goes it, man. Give us all the cool jive, mister.
1964		P. Marshall ‘Some Get Wasted’ in Clarke Harlem, USA (1971) 349: Man, cool your role [...] Like I said, the jive is on.
1965		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 123: Now them old broads will come in, in them old friggish teddies, and start doin’ the mess around— / that’s the jive in the landladies con game to tear your bankroll down.
1977		Sun. Times Mag. 11 Sept. 51: I’d always been a sucker for that kind of jive.
1995		(con. 1985–90) P. Bourjois In Search of Respect 143: The cultural clash between white ‘yuppie’ power and inner-city ‘scrambling jive’ in the service sector is much more than superficial style.

5. in drug uses.

6. (US black/gang) wine.

1969

R.L. Keiser Vice Lords 41: ‘I got to get me some jive [wine] tonight’.

7. a second-rate person.

1970

B. Seale Seize the Time 141: The dudes [...] were just jives, [...] we’re just going to have to get uptight on them.

8. one’s personality or material possessions.

1964		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 98: Now if you people will be cooperative and give me a helping hand, / we can soon have all this jive in my moving van.
1971		H.E. Roberts Third Ear n.p.: jive n. [...] 3. one’s personality or belongings; e.g. You better get your jive together.

9. (US black) a gun.

1969

R.L. Keiser Vice Lords 18: Now Cool Fool had my jive [gun]. I said, ‘Fool, give me my jive!’ and Fool, he gave me my gun’ [Ibid.] 63: So they all started approaching us, and Count threw out that jive! They thought it was a Luger, and they ran.

10. a proposition, a suggestion.

1972

‘A Pimp Toast’ in Milner & Milner (1972) 289: Well, I know you can take some jive.