cut the pigeon wing

English[edit]

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

cut the pigeon wing (third-person singular simple present cuts the pigeon wing, present participle cutting the pigeon wing, simple past and past participle cut the pigeon wing)

(idiomatic, US, dated) To dance with graceful or fancy movements.
- 1912, James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man‎^[1]:
  […] that was because no manager could imagine that audiences would pay to see Negro performers in any other role than that of Mississippi River roustabouts; but there was lots of talent and ambition. I often heard the younger and brighter men discussing the time when they would compel the public to recognize that they could do something more than grin and cut pigeon-wings.
- 1922, Laura Lee Hope [pseudonym], Six little Bunkers at Mammy June's‎^[2]:
  They all tried to be polite, and Russ grew quite friendly with one of the bellboys who brought them ice water. He asked that boy if he knew how to cut the pigeon wing, and the boy grinned very broadly.

Frederic G[omes] Cassidy, editor (1985), “cut the pigeon wing”, in Dictionary of American Regional English, volumes I (Introduction and A–C), Cambridge, Mass., London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, →ISBN.