A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from April 10, 2010
Gubmint or Gub’mint (Gubment or Gub’ment)

“Gubment” has been a black dialect word for “government” since at least 1861. “Gubmint” has been cited in print since at least the 1940s. Both terms are frequently written as “gub’ment” and “gub’mint.” “Gubment/gubmint” has seen increased usage in the computer age as a mock name for the government.
 
Dialect variations of the word “government” include “gubberment/gubbermint” (from the early 1800s) and “gooberment/goobermint” (from the late 1900s).
     
   
Urban Dictionary
Gubmint
Gubmint - The Government
“On Wenzdee, ah gits mah free gubmint cheez.”
by Bob May 22, 2004
 
gubmint 
Government, as used by right-wing pansies, used to “protest” progressive taxation against the capitalist class who stole the wealth from the working class in the first place. In the place of taxation, the right-wingers advocate charity, in other words, they ask the capitalists to be generous with other people’s (working class) money!
“Waah! The gubmint stole my money which I got by brutally exploiting third world sweatshop employees! Waah!” - Right-winger crying over taxes
by RedBlackBabu Apr 18, 2009
 
Urban Dictionary
gubment
A term for the government used by backwards hillbillies.
I didn’t get my welfare check, damn gubment…
by B-Zor Jul 8, 2003
 
Wiktionary: gubmint
gubmint (uncountable)
(colloquial) The government.
Quotations
1942. Ernestine Hill, Australian Frontier, page 98:
“Good luck corroboree, make him big fat one, all same Gubmint fella,” old Rosie, his “aunt by skin” told me earnestly.
2005., Jeff Hull, Pale Morning Done: A Novel, page 144:
[H]e understood that his musings about onomatopoeia and sympathetic response gave the gubmint boys far too much credit.
2007. Monica Davis, Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building the Future in Black America, page 155:
Seems like half the gubmint bureaucrats and snake oil politicians want to help us.
 
Google Books
December 1861, The Knickerbocker, or The New York Monthly, pg. 553:
Any how, de Gubment allers hes to hev a good many of dem kind er folks, and I spose jes at dis perticlar time dey hev a good deal more use for em dan common.’
   
Google Books
On the Border
By James R. Gilmore
Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard
1867
Pg. 139:
Wall, he say, ‘De gubment at Washington am de sun to dis Union ; it gibs light and heat to all de States and de territories ; and you blot dat out, and you’ll all go wand’ring off, lost inter de outer darkness.’
   
Google Books
Wool-Gathering
By Gail Hamilton
Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields
1867
Pg. 307:
“O yes ! gub’ment gives rations of meat once in five days.”
 
21 March 1874, Daily Nebraska Press (Nebraska City, NE), “A Colored Cranger,”  pg. 4:
Sam. Da is de onest people, who is gwine to get all de offices and deform the gubment.
 
28 May 1879, New Orleans (LA) Picayune, pg. 9:
“De Gub’ment Boat.”
 
Google Books
Australian Frontier
By Ernestine Hill
New York, NY: Council on Books in Wartime
1943, ©1942
Pg. 98:
“Good luck corroboree, make him big fat one, all same Gubmint fella,” old Rosie, his “aunt by skin” told me earnestly.”
   
Google Books
Pidgin English
By Edgar Sheppard Sayer
Toronto, Ont.: E.S. Sayer
1944
Pg. 61:
‘Yabber-Yabber gub’mint fella.’

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