Daddy (slang)

Daddy is a slang term that refers to a sexually attractive older man or a man who is sexually involved with a younger partner.

(1920’s - current day)

Daddy is to mean one's boyfriend, especially an older man or a sugar daddy. Beginning in the 1920s, the term was often heard in blues music and African-American Vernacular English or “Black Folk Talk” or “Talking Ghetto”.

According to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, the earliest use of "daddy" in a non-paternal context was in 1681, in reference to what sex workers called their procurers or older male customers. This term is also used across races, with its origins becoming most recognized in the 1920s.

Throughout the 1920s, the term was used in blues music and African-American Vernacular English to mean one's boyfriend, especially an older man or a sugar daddy. In 1920, the term is used in a romantic context in Aileen Stanley's blues song "I Wonder Where My Sweet, Sweet Daddy's Gone." Its usage is similar in Lavinia Turner's 1922 song "How Can I Be Your 'Sweet Mama' When You're 'Daddy' to Someone Else?" The same year, the term appears in Trixie Smith's "My Man Rocks Me" in the lyrics "My man rocks me, with one steady roll [...] I said now, Daddy, ain’t we got fun".

In Gay Culture and BDSM, a "Dad/Son or “Man/Boy” relationship can share similarities with a dynamic of dominance and submission.

New York claimed in 2017 that the gay term evolved from leather subculture, which began in the 1940s.

In the 1970s, the "Leather Daddy" archetype (which has sadomasochistic associations) was proliferated in such media as the Drummer magazine (launched in 1975); 1976 to 1979 gay pornographic films Working Man Trilogy; and BDSM novels by Larry Townsend.