jump salty

vb

American

to become angry. A well-known item of black argot which was included in so-called Ebonics, recognised as a legitimate language variety by school officials in Oakland, California, in late 1996. The phrase, which seems to date from pre-World War II jive talk (it was listed in Cal Calloway's famous Hepster's lexicon in 1938), became part of street slang in the 1970s. It is now in widespread use and is sometimes heard among younger white speakers describing a key behaviour pat-tern, also expressed by jump off and step off and the British kick off.