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Glite Dictionary
Jazz Age

Jazz Age

1 5.0
A period in the 1920s in the United States with lively jazz music, parties, and social change
  • noun
  • /dʒæz eɪdʒ/
translation icon : Era del Jazz
  • The Jazz Age was a time of great cultural change and artistic expression in America.

In a few years time, Armstrong, Coleman, Hawkins, Duke Ellington, and more will all fly to fame, providing the soundtrack to the restless and raucous Jazz Age.

Examples

  • People felt, in other words, that the dawn of the Jazz Age heralded the decline of Western Civilization.

    Blog text (19)

  • Gershwin grew up in the neighborhoods of New York and had the sounds of the Jazz Age's music in his ears.

    Academic text (1998)

  • So we'll go over the Jazz Age more in the next video.

  • The Jazz Age, it is called.

    Zelig (1983)

  • Events in the Jazz Age move too rapidly...

    Zelig (1983)

  • The last big blowout of the Jazz Age.

    Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989)

  • Arno's take is of an older group who closed the door on the Jazz Age and ignored the Depression.

    Academic text (1997)

  • It was the Jazz Age... when folly was king and crime sat in the driver's seat.

    Devil's Gate (2004)

  • The Great Gatsby worked on multiple levels, being a romance, a thriller, and a satire on the Jazz Age.

    Blog text (34)

  • This was the Jazz Age, and an antipuritan spirit was at large in America: its hallmarks were paganism, the New Woman, Flaming Youth, and jazz itself.

    Academic text (1997)

Synonyms

1920s
vsJazz Age
79 2.9

A ten-year period from 1920 to 1929 that saw big cultural change

is a specific US cultural era within that decade marked by jazz and youth

Surface Forms

Jazz Age singular
Jazz Ages plural

Morphology

jazz + age

The compound combines 'jazz' (a music genre) with 'age' (a historical period), so its basic meaning — a period characterized by jazz — is directly inferable from the constituents. The 'X Age' naming pattern is common cross-linguistically and in English (e.g. Stone Age, Ice Age), so a B1 learner who knows both words will understand it refers to the 1920s era associated with jazz, even if some cultural nuances require extra background knowledge.

Etymology

Jazz Age comes from the new, exciting jazz music that filled clubs and parties in the 1920s and the word age, which means a 'period'. Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald helped make the name popular, so Jazz Age now means that lively 'period' of music, youth, and social change.