shuck and jive 

To shuck and jive" originally referred to the intentionally misleading words and actions that African-Americans would employ in order to deceive racist Euro-Americans in power, both during the period of slavery and afterwards. The expression was documented as being in wide usage in the 1920s, but may have originated much earlier.

"Shucking and jiving" was a tactic of both survival and resistance. A slave, for instance, could say eagerly, "Oh, yes, Master," and have no real intention to obey. Or an African-American man could pretend to be working hard at a task he was ordered to do, but might put up this pretense only when under observation. Both would be instances of "doin' the old shuck 'n jive."

It has been adopted into non-Afroamerican speech, with a reference to behavior adopted in order to avoid criticism.

In order to keep my job, I had to do the shuck and jive!

shuck and jive by Dr. Mark January 20, 2010

shuck and jive 

A phrase no one knew was racist until Yahoo said so.

"Hey man, did you hear shuck and jive is racist?"

"Yeah. Yahoo is my homepage too, man."

shuck and jive by Editor9955 October 24, 2012

shuck and jive 

Not the whole truth; or manipulating something to get it your way.

Person 1: I don't believe you can still do that
Person 2: I can so *demonstrates*

shuck and jive by Swarsfanatic July 6, 2005

shuck and jive 

Shuck: To get rid of, ditch, throw away. To try to shed your true image in favor of a false one.
Jive: Trying to adopt a new social status, pretending to be "all that" + a bag of pentium chips.

Rig likes to shuck and jive about his "new" system. Man, dude is running a 286.

shuck and jive by Snaggletoothed Fisherman October 16, 2005

shuck and jive 

to try and wank and be cool at the same time.

as chris rock once said somewhere (I can't remember where from) "Ain't no shuckin' and jivin'"

David: Did you see Lee in the club chasing away all the hotties?

Percy: Yeah man, niggah was shuckin' and jivin'.

shuck and jive by Lars May 16, 2005