Colloquial Variant guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
suffix
Forms hip-hop-sounding words, which replaces the word with the first sound of the word followed by -izzle.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: morpheme, slang
Qualifier: African-American Vernacular
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
Popularized by rap artist Snoop Dogg, but first put to record by Frankie Smith's 1981 "Double Dutch Bus", from a style of cant (esoteric slang) used by African American pimps and jive hustlers of the 1970s. The “-iz, -izzle, -izzo, -ilz” speak (which also uses an infix -iz-), similar in some ways to Pig Latin, was developed by African Americans around the period of the Harlem Renaissance, with hotspots of the speak in Oakland, New York City, and Philadelphia. It was partially developed as young African American girls improvised chants and nursery rhymes while jumping rope, with the -iz dialect serving to add syllables when necessary to maintain the rhythm. A similar -iz dialect has also been used by carnies (carnival workers).
