“Dumb Brick” Means Very Cold in New York City Slang

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Duncan from Brooklyn.

What can we do for you, Duncan?

Yeah, well, I had a question about kind of Brooklyn slang and New York slang. I originally grew up in California. I heard, I was like having a conversation about slang with some of my friends from college, and someone brought up the fact that you can say dumb, meaning really, and brick, meaning especially cold. And so just sort of asking if I were to say the phrase to them, it’s dumb brick outside, but they know what I’m talking about. They said that’s something we heard all the time. And I was like, wow, if I heard those two next to each other, I would have no idea what they were talking about before learning that from them.

So my question was sort of like just about the origin of that, but also like examples of two slang words popped right next to each other. That would kind of make you go like, what on earth is this person talking about?

Yeah, dumb brick. I’ve heard both of those before. Let’s treat them separately. Brick is the most interesting of the two. Brick to mean cold is going to mystify most of our listeners. They’ve just never heard it unless they do know something about New York City slang. I know it’s been around for at least 20 years. I’ve got written records of that, but I have no doubt that it’s older than that. But it’s a classic New York slang word that isn’t really associated with one particular generation. So it doesn’t die, which is pretty cool.

Sometimes when a slang word comes on too strong and too quickly, it’s associated with one era and it sounds dated or unfashionable pretty quickly. It’s not so with brick. Here we are about two decades on and it still has legs and still has got a life. So that’s nice.

But dumb as an intensifier or something you use as an emphatic, that goes back at least 200 years, maybe 300 years. And it started as a euphemism for damn, D-A-M-N. And you can find it in the 1700s. They’re talking about somebody being dumb rich, meaning very rich. Isn’t that interesting?

That is interesting because it sounds so informal.

Yeah, it sounds like something. Because I know people also use stupid for that reason, too. Like if it’s stupid gold outside, I’ve heard that before.

Yes, stupid is an intensifier, is an adverbial intensifier. It’s got at least 30 years on it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I really looked into it. I could find it in probably early hip-hop songs in the late 70s, early 80s. I would not be surprised at all.

Totally, totally. And it’s funny, too. It’s funny you say that it’s New York specific. I told my sister I was going to be talking to y’all about this word, and she was like, are you sure that my friend didn’t tell you this? Because I remember having this conversation with someone from Long Island. And I was like, no, my friend told me this. So it was nice to be justified that it wasn’t just like something my friend made up.

Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Yeah, so yeah, it’s a very New York thing, brick meaning cold. There are a lot of theories about why brick, because cold bricks are especially cold, and because they’re hard and heavy. And New York, when it’s really cold, sometimes it’s a heavy duty just to leave the house. But I think that’s all fanciful and people kind of putting on the word after they hear it, rather than that really being the origin of it.

Definitely.

Thanks for calling, Duncan. Really appreciate it.

Hey, no problem. Thanks for talking to me.

All right. Take care. Bye.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

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