Lew, a small, kindly middle-aged man, proved to our satisfaction that the pants of the typical zoot ensemble came original from his atelier. With some friendly cooperation from the editors of the Amsterdam News, an uptown newspaper published by and for colored people, we got in touch with Lew Eisenstein, proprietor of Lew Pants Store, on 125th Street. Zoot Lore Last week practically everybody with any pretensions to journalism was ferreting out the origins of the zoot suit, and we ourself were not idle. The item in The New Yorker (June 19, 1943) cited by American Notes & Queries (above) says this: The 'V-knot' tie, the zoot chain, the shirt collar, the tight 'stuff cuff,' the wide, flat hat and the Dutch-toe shoes of the zoot-suiter simply display the hep-cat's tendency toward exaggeration in all things. It had its origin in assonance, which colors all hep-cat slang.

The February 1940 New York Times article cited in American Notes & Queries (above), as condensed for Negro Digest, volume 1 (1943), offers the following glancing comment on the origin of the name zoot suit:Ī 'reat pleat' is merely an exaggerated pleat. The Times also cites reports that the suit was inspired by authentic Civil War garb worn by Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind (which opened in Georgia in December, 1939).Īccording to Allan Metcalf, From Skedaddle to Selfie: Words of the Generations (2015), the song 'A Zoot Suit (for My Sunday Gal)' (written in 1941) matches a boy's desire for a 'zoot suit with a reat pleat/And a drape shape, and a stuff cuff' with a girl's desire for a 'brown gown with a zop top/And a hip slip, and a laced waist.' The song was written by Ray Gilbert and Bob O'Brien-white song composers who presumably were not part of the Harlem 'slang rhymes' scene but who had probably been strongly influenced by Duke Ellington's 1941 Jump for Joy show, which, according to Kathy Peiss, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (2011), 'brought the zoot suit to center stage as a symbol of expressiveness, fluidity, an freedom.' McEver believes that the idea for the zoot suit was original with one Clyde Duncan, for whom he, against his better judgment, had sent the measurements to the Globe Tailoring Company in Chicago. 21) carries the zoot suit back to only February, 1940, 'at Frierson-McEver's in Gainsville, Ga.' Mr. The New York Times evidence (June 11, 1943, p. Another white haberdasher in Harlem, Charlie Kelly, has a variety of documents to back up his claim that he sold the first complete zoot suit in 1937. This same account credits the fad to a Harlem clothier named Lew Eisenstein, whose wife (with the help of a salesman) took in the bottoms of several pairs of pants and created the 'pegs' overnight. And a zoot suit is therefore a 'suit worn by a lad who would pronounce it 'zoot.'' Similar 'slang rhymes' indispensable to a description of the outfit-reat pleat ('right pleat,' i.e., a good pleat) stuff cuff, etc.-are cited. The word 'zoot' is, according to its findings, a corrupt form of suit. The New Yorker (June 19, 1943) ignored the more sensational aspects of the 'zoot suit' controversy, and commented briefly on the etymology of the term. Does anyone happen to know more about the word 'zoot' and this use of speech called 'nonsense reduplication?'Įarly (1939–1943) cultural and etymological inquiries into 'zoot suit'Īmerican Notes & Queries, volume 3 (July 1943) has this interesting commentary on zoot suit : I am also curious about this 'nonsense reduplication' and wonder whether anyone has taken the time to study it as an aspect of American English usage, whether it might be the predecessor to what is called 'rap music' today, and what led to the development of it as well as whether or not it is a manner of speaking found in other parts of the world and in other languages. If the Ngram viewer is correct, it has been used in American English at least as far back as the 1850s. I even went to Google books Ngram Viewer just to try to see if the word existed before the era of the zoot suit. One source I visited (the Online Etymology Dictionary) speculated that it was 'probably a nonsense reduplication of suit (compare reet pleat, drape shape from the same jargon).'įor some reason, and maybe because it really wasn't all that long ago that such a suit was popular, I found it odd that I didn't find a more definitive explanation.

I am curious about the word 'zoot' in 'zoot suit.' I have not done extensive research on the word, but the cursory search I conducted yielded so little and was so duplicative that I didn't bother digging too deeply on my own.

Skedaddle etymology