Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. ch_vertical ="premium"; A point I found interesting was the following: Here's how the dance worked: Couples would stand in a square formation with men on the inside perimeter and then dance around the ballroom "as if in mimicry of the white man's attitudes and manners," according to Richard Kislan.

ch_height = 250; The cakewalk was a pre-Civil War dance originally performed by slaves on plantation grounds. I really don't see why anyone would think that a possible (but by no means definite) connection between cake walks and the phrase "a piece of cake" should suffice to render a question about "cake walk" a duplicate of a question about "piece of cake." The name is so…

2)  the "Fancy Cakewalk," (dressed up type) English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. The Minstrel shows of the time would paint their faces black and at the end of the show would do a "Grand Finale," which often times was the Cakewalk. ^ Philip M. Peek, Kwesi Yankah, African Folklore: An Encyclopedia, 2003, p. 33. Enter your email address to subscribe to the blog by email. Newspaper article discussions of cakewalks in the 1870s suggest that the claim that a cake-walk was originally a dancing contest may be ill founded. How did the phrase take a different meaning over time? What does cakewalk mean? Origins: The Chalk Line Walk as it was originally known in 1850 in the southern plantations later became very popular from 1895-1905 as the Cakewalk with a resurgence around 1915. The largest of the cakes were those destined as prizes to the successful walkers.

Information and translations of cakewalk in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web.

The Breakdown, Buck dance, Jigs and the Chalk Line Walk would be mixed when the Minstrel Shows started using the Chalk Line Walk in their acts, a Minstrel parody, mixed, which later would be named the Cakewalk. By the 1870s, a cakewalk was a popular feature of minstrel shows. Here the implication is that, after slugging each other for 61 rounds, both Jackson and Corbett were so tired that all they could do was hold onto each other and walk (or perhaps stagger) slowly around the ring.

For their 'Sunday entertainment', the plantation owners started having contests to prove to the other who had the best slave walker which would give the evolution of the Cake being given as a prize.. These dancers would do a Penny Jig, which the dancer would pay the fiddler a penny after dancing, trying to win the cake.

The form in which it is now most commonly spoken and spelled is 'oops-a-daisy'. Double cakewalk!

This is the first time I have heard a cake walk described as a dancing contest.

When you say that the victory was a cakewalk what you mean is that is was very easily achieved. Not Guilty [a third racehorse] was third.

The name is sometimes also applied to the dance's precursor on the plantations. These dances were entertainment to the slave masters but a social ritual and often a parody of the highfalutin behavior of the white slave owners. A man by the name of Dobbins (born in 1812) is said to have first introduced Cakewalk dancers to high society at Turners Hall in Brooklyn in 1866. Upsa daesy!

You didn’t have to put in too much of an effort; you won without really having to work hard. A number of other announcements of cakewalks appear from 1874 onward.

I have seen it used to mean a contest of bearing or deportment. //-->.

The Cakewalk would be the window for other African-American dances to enter white society in the future. This gave rise to the idiom as easy as a cakewalk, which in turn led to the sense of cakewalk as something that is easy. When the music stopped, the master of ceremonies would draw a number, and the person standing on the corresponding square would win a home-baked cake. Origin. an absurdly or surprisingly easy task. most likely it was a building at that location [or maybe Madison Sq. 1916 in OEDS I 414: A fight that would not be a cakewalk. ch_client = "Thangavel1"; This cake set upon a distaff is the signal of pleasure and becomes the reward of talent; it is sometimes carried off by the best dancer, sometimes by the achiest wag of the company.

Why does DOS ask for the current date and time upon booting? The dancers were slaves, who used the opportunity to mock the mannerisms of the aristocratic Southern fuckers who owned them.

The best walkers were received with the usual marks of approbation, commingled with cheers and waving of handkerchiefs, and were recalled after the termination of their walk. Elsewhere in the same issue of this newspaper the following item appears under the headline "City Summary": The London Circus enters upon the tenth week of a remarkably prosperous season on Dec. 17.

This page was last edited on 6 September 2020, at 17:21.

The couple with the best dancing skills would then "take the cake," an idiom that is still common today. The paper also cites several secondhand reports from the 1950s and ’60s that say the slaves dressed up and paraded around in their finery to mock the plantation owners. The cake was carried off by Mr. Lud McFarland and wife, who were decided to be the most graceful walkers.

However, the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has a much earlier example from The “Fight of the Century,” an 1897 book by George Siler and Lou M. Houseman.

But a few months later, in "Display of Fistic Science," in the Indianapolis [Indiana] Journal (May 22, 1891), the term appears in the context of a prize fight: DISPLAY OF FISTIC SCIENCE: Many Rounds Fought by Jackson and Corbett Without Advantage to Either: The Much Advertised "Mill" Declared a Draw in the Sixty-First by the Referee After It Hid Resolved Itself Into a "Cake-Walk.". The Champion Strut (1954) was a mixture of the Lambeth Walk, Cakewalk and Swing dance.

Is there a mechanical benefit to using a light crossbow over a long bow or short bow?

something easy, sure, or certain. 2. historical music for this dance.

My 9-month old baby only sleeps in our arms.

From an untitled item in the Huntingdon [Pennsylvania] Journal (March 18, 1874): The festival and "cake walk" held in the Court House, last week, by the colored folks, was a success. Cakewalk. In commenting on the use of cakewalks in minstrel shows, Amiri Baraka (writing as LeRoi Jones) remarked in his book Blues People: The Negro Experience in White America (1963) on the irony of whites satirizing blacks satirizing whites: “If the cakewalk is a Negro dance caricaturing certain white customs, what is that dance when, say, a white theater company attempts to satirize it as a Negro dance?

From an advertisement in the New York [City] Clipper December 22, 1877): GILMORE'S GARDEN, COMMENCING MONDAY EVENING, DEC . However, the trial was not for speed, but to see which one excelled in the fine art of walking; which one carried her head and shoulders erect; which one turned her toes out; and which one knew how to manage her arms and hands gracefully. Are mentally ill people allowed to perform research? Informal. Origins: The Chalk Line Walk as it was originally known in 1850 in the southern plantations later became very popular from 1895-1905 as the Cakewalk with a resurgence around 1915. Couples would line up and form an aisle and down through the middle each couple would take their turn mimicking the mannerisms of the upper-class white people.

The pair that performed this task most gracefully was awarded a prize.

It was danced at social events, with the best dancers often receiving cake as a prize. COURTESY : The Hindu (The National News-Paper) - India ch_type = "mpu";

The Oxford English Dictionary notes that usage of the word "cakewalk" really began to take off during this decade. Turn the other way and do the slow drag

As a verb, from 1904. It doesn’t make sense. DARE notes that this “easy” sense of “cakewalk” is similar to a more popular expression, “piece of cake,” which showed up a couple of decades later.

And do the rag-time dance. The usual circus performances were given. var ch_queries = new Array( );

To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. Many of the upper class Summer and Seaside hotels would feature a Cakewalk at the end of the season. Frank Whittaker officiated as master of ceremonies, and received a cordial welcome as he entered the arena. There is at least one scrap of evidence that horse racing may have picked up the term before boxing. originated as a competition among Black dancers to win a cake.

ch_width = 550; This fête is, I believe, peculiar to the colored race, and although there nay exist no written record of its history or of its origin it has been faithfully handed down among the traditions of the past from generation to generation, by sable grandmothers, until in our own day it has suddenly sprung up again in our little village. It doesn’t make sense. Ray winning the watch, Miles Butler the gold-headed cane, and George Bay and Mrs. Hyatt the cake. Replaced its Old English cognate, coecel. Rather, it was because the dance steps were fluid and graceful. 1.

The conflicting origin of a “piece of cake”, A Negro Festival: The 'Cake Walk' at Mount Vernon, Extra: In a Walk: Joe Courtney Had an Easy Victory at Guttenburg Today, the Smithsonian's Stories from the National Museum of American History, Hot Meta Posts: Allow for removal by moderators, and thoughts about future…, Goodbye, Prettify. noun

The Cakewalk was a form of entertainment among African Americans. • Given you experience, getting the job should be a cakewalk.

Ivan Bliznetsov/E+/Getty Images Plus, he has his Breaking Bad Halloween costume all set.

By the late 19th century, according to OED and DARE citations, “cakewalk” was being used in reference to a strutting or prancing dance modeled after the earlier slave contests.

From cake +‎ walk.

Neither the Oxford English Dictionary nor the Dictionary of American Regional English has any 19th-century citations for the term “cakewalk” used to refer to these plantation contests. ch_color_bg = "FFFFFF";

I find the idea of white minstrels in blackface satirizing a dance satirizing themselves a remarkable kind of irony—which, I suppose is the whole point of minstrel shows.”. THE GREATEST NOVELTY OF TUE AGE! 1897 Siler & Houseman Fight of the Century 46: It's a cake-walk for Jim...Fitz hasn't a chance. var ch_selected=Math.floor((Math.random()*ch_queries.length)); Ten couples contended for the prizes, consisting of a gold watch, a cake containing a $20 gold piece, and a gold-mounted ebony cane.

Loud clapping of hands, and even cheers, greeted them [three young women] as they started upon their expedition, which was to be three times around the room.

Over time the dance evolved into a exaggerated parody of the white, upper class ballroom dancers who would imitate the mannerisms.

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Therefore, the cakewalk is a distinctly African American product that invokes the same creativity and inventiveness that can be seen in later African American dancing and music.

Origin and evolution of 'on the bubble' in senses related to 'having an uncertain outcome', SciFi novel about a vault on the Ocean floor. But the cakewalk was more than a recreational dance; it also gave a chance for enslaved people to ridicule those who tyrannized them. … Fitz hasn’t a chance.”, (Fitzsimmons actually won the fight in the 14th round.).