shimmy

Shimmy appeared in American English around 1837 as a dialectal pronunciation of chemise, the French word for a woman's undergarment. A shimmy was a shift, a nightgown, a thin inner garment. By the 1910s, the word had attached itself to a dance in which the shoulders and torso shook rapidly, vibrating the body as if the garment were being shaken off. The etymology is debated — some suggest West African dance influences rather than French undergarments — but the chemise connection has the most documentary support.

Mae West performed the shimmy in vaudeville shows in the 1910s. Gilda Gray claimed to have invented it, though the claim was contested. What is not contested is that the shimmy scandalized respectable society. The rapid shaking of the upper body — particularly the chest — was considered indecent. Cities passed ordinances against it. The Catholic Church condemned it. The shimmy was the Twist of its era: a dance so simple and so suggestive that institutions felt obligated to ban it.

The shimmy entered jazz culture and stayed there. Josephine Baker shimmied in the Folies Bergère in 1920s Paris. The movement became part of the vocabulary of jazz dance, cabaret, and eventually Broadway. Bob Fosse used controlled, isolated shimmies in his choreography. The shimmy went from vaudeville scandal to respected dance technique in about fifty years.

The word shimmy also took on a mechanical meaning: when a car's wheels vibrate at speed, the car shimmies. The connection is direct — the uncontrolled shaking of the dance gave its name to the uncontrolled shaking of machinery. A dance named after a nightgown became a word for a mechanical defect.