Kimble, A Masterful Walk

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Robin Taylor from Carmel, Indiana.

Hi, Robin. Welcome to the show. How can we help?

The word that I was writing to you about is the word Kimball. My family background is from the South, like Tennessee and Mississippi, and our ethnicity is Black, African American.

And my family has used this word. I heard my parents use this word to describe a man’s, it’s never a woman’s kind of strut. With a Kimball, or if someone is Kimbling, or if he Kimbled across the street, there’s a lean of the torso slightly to the side, and one arm is casually thrown forwards and brought backwards, almost like a swim stroke.

The stride has a cadence with perhaps one leg slightly bending in step with some kind of attitude. And I see examples of these strides in the cool dudes of the 70s. Personally, I see Kimbling in the gates of Denzel Washington or our wonderful former president, Barack Obama, although theirs is less exaggerated than Kimball, to which my family referred.

So my husband is white, and he’s fascinated with this use of the word and asks all of our friends, have they heard of this term used, too, sometimes to my embarrassment?

But I was wondering, have you two ever heard any comment or have any comment on the use of this word for him and maybe to educate me?

Kimble. So we’re talking about K-I-M-B-L-E, something like that?

Yes.

Or Kimballing?

Kimballing?

Yes.

And your husband is white and you’re black?

Yes.

Wow, I know the walk. I’ve seen those 1970s movies. I totally have.

And as a matter of fact, I think you’re right.

I think people like Barack Obama and Denzel Washington have it.

Samuel Jackson has it, right?

Chris Rock in his stage comedy shows that he does, he has it.

And he does it as part of his show.

But I know the walk.

I can’t do it myself.

But it’s always for a man, too.

I’ve never heard them refer to a woman doing it.

It’s always been a male thing.

Do you know any other terms for this?

No, not really.

Okay.

I have a ton of slang dictionaries at home, and I have some that specialize in African-American language or Black English or African-American vernacular English, whatever the term that they wanted to call it.

I’ve looked in Clarence Major’s book.

I looked in Janita Smitherman’s book.

I’ve looked in a variety of amateur slang dictionaries that people put together.

I’ve looked in the standard slang works.

I’ve looked in Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

I’ve looked in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

I checked the Oxford English Dictionary, the Dictionary of American Regional English.

I looked at Urban Dictionary.

I have something like 80 gigabytes worth of data on my computer that I searched that I’ve been saving for the last 15 or 20 years.

I have a library of hundreds of books.

I have never seen this word Kimbo.

I haven’t.

But I do have one possible suggestion.

And it shows up in a couple of dictionaries related to the language of the Caribbean.

And in these books, there’s a form of the word akimbo, A-K-I-M-B-O.

So if you stand akimbo, it’s when you’re like hands on your hips.

There are a couple shortened version, clipped versions of that word, which is just kimbo, K-I-M-B-O, that appear in the dictionaries.

Now, it doesn’t exactly refer to walking, but it means to put your hands, to remove your hands from your hips.

And that’s the closest that I come.

So it is about your hands.

It is about your hips.

It is kind of about the way that you’re standing.

And it is Kimbo, which sounds kind of like Kimbo.

So my question for you, is there any Caribbean heritage in your family?

Anybody from Barbados?

Anybody from Jamaica or Guyana?

Not to my knowledge.

No.

Darn.

So Kimbo meaning to have your hands on your hips and then take them off while you’re walking?

In the Caribbean uses, it’s just Kimbo.

This is what it says.

With your arms, a Kimbo, don’t put your hand on your Kimbo when you’re talking to me.

So your Kimbo is your hips or your hands on your hips.

Alternately, it’s also to remove your hands, to take your hands out of your Kimbo is to remove your hands from your hips.

So it’s not exactly the same.

It’s about the body.

It sounds kind of like that’s the best I can do.

And I would give that like a one out of a hundred chance of being the right term.

Wow.

This sounds like a real mystery.

Robin, do you have any other ideas about it?

I don’t.

And it’s just something that, you know, as a child, and even today, my mother says, yeah, Kimball.

Kimball, it means, and she described it, you know, the walk.

And like you and I are thinking about these other famous people that we see strut like this, like a strut or swagger, you know.

I mean, you’re walking with confidence, but you’re also really cool.

But I did think about the use of the word akimbo.

I really did.

So that’s resonating.

What we’ve got to do here, Robin, is we have a large audience, and we’re going to ask people if they know the word kimble or something like that that means to walk with that particular kind of swagger.

A black man walking with that particular kind of swagger that’s similar to the word kimble or exactly the word kimble.

And if we get that, then we will all be delighted and we will share it with you, all right?

We will all be delighted, yes.

We will indeed.

I like them.

You know, I like giving people answers.

You know, I really do, Robin.

I think Martha loves it as well.

But boy, I love a mystery too.

Yeah.

Oh, this is a good one.

We’ll let you know if we come up with anything, all right?

Thank you.

We love the show.

Oh, yay.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Thanks a lot, Robin.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

All right.

You got to help Robin out.

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