Twerk

Twerking (/ˈtwɜrkɪŋ/) is a type of dancing in which an individual, usually a female,^[1] dances to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low squatting stance.^[2] Though the term seems to be of uncertain origin with common assumptions suggesting it is a contraction of "footwork" and a portmanteau of the words "twist" and "jerk", there is evidence from ethnographic interviews in New Orleans that the term began as street language in New Orleans with the rise of the local hip-hop music known as Bounce.^[3] Since the late 1990s, twerking was associated with Bounce music of the Dirty South and was disseminated via mainstream hip hop videos and popular video-sharing sites since the mid 2000s. In 2013, twerk was added to the Oxford Dictionary Online.^[4] The dictionary said the word had been around for 20 years. The word was a runner-up in the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013.^[5]