Meanings
- uncountableThe dialect of English spoken by people of sub-Saharan African ancestry living stateside.
Like Hawk, he moved easily in and out of blackspeak as it suited him.
"They is a couple of approaches to the whore business," he said.
2006, Robert B. Parker, Hundred-Dollar Baby, Putnam, →ISBN, page 352 more examples
It sounds odd to us now, but contemporary sources... suggest how the archaic blackspeak that we associate with blackface performers had some of the aura of the later white appropriations of black speech.
1995, Robert Dawidoff, “The Kind of Person You Have to Sound Like to Sing 'Alexander's Ragtime Band'”, in Elazar Barkan, Ronald Bush, editors, Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 302Jordan's records were the first time many whites encountered the nuances of hip urban blackspeak.
2002, Joe S. Harrington, Sonic Cool: The Life & Death of Rock 'n' Roll, Hal Leonard, →ISBN, page 64Synonyms: African-American Vernacular English, AAVE, Ebonics
Synonyms & antonyms
nounThe dialect of English spoken by people of sub-Saharan African ancestry living stateside.
Origin
- Proto-Germanic*blakaz
- Proto-West Germanic*blak
- Old Englishblæc
- Middle Englishblak
- Englishblack
- Englishblackspeak
Cite this entry
blackspeak. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/blackspeak
“blackspeak.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/blackspeak. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “blackspeak,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/blackspeak.
Source: blackspeak on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.