— The Hut! Hut! Hike! series examines the origins of football terminology and how the game's evolution drove changes in its vocabulary. The full article (#14 in the series) is available to paid subscribers only. —

Among the odder words to enter the language of football is trickeration, and the walk it took to enter the game is equally unusual. Trickeration originated in the world of music with the release of Cab Calloway’s 1931 Trickeration, a song about the jazz and dance scene in Harlem at the time. Best as I can tell from the lyrics, trickeration referred to musical and dance tricks that produced joy or fun. That meaning was picked up in 1932 to describe the pitching of Guy Bush, a White Sox pitcher, but otherwise remained in the musical world for the next four decades.