1937 E. Hemingway To have & have Not iii. x. 149 Harry..heard the bop-bop-bop-bop, small and hollow sounding in the wail of the siren.

1942 ‘B. J. Ellan’ Spitfire! xv. 82 Shells seemed to be exploding very close to us although the familiar ‘ bop’ was inaudible.

1948 Language Mar. 132 People in Chicago use rebop and bop for the same kind of music.

1948 Life 11 Oct. 139/2 Boppers go gaga over such bebop classics as OO Bop Sha Bam.

1948 Sat. Rev. 25 Dec. 48/2 It is, in the words of bop hepsters, real crazy.

1950 J. Vedey Band Leaders p. xi The BBC has not been lacking in fostering its development, even to the point of broadcasting Bop—most advanced of all jazz forms.

1950 J. Vedey Band Leaders 27 He [Harry Roy] is an acknowledged past master at the art of Bop-Scat singing.

1955 L. Feather Encycl. Jazz (1956) 27 As musicians gathered outside the clubs along Fifty-Second Street to discuss the music of Charlie Parker..or of Dizzy Gillespie.., they would use an onomatopoetic expression to describe a typical phrase played by these musicians: ‘rebop’ or ‘bebop’ they would say. Eventually the word became shortened and ‘bop’ was accepted as the name for the new branch of jazz.

1957 New Yorker 26 Oct. 174/2 One of the leaders of an increasingly fashionable school of modern jazz called..‘hard bop’ or ‘funky’ is Horace Silver.

1962 Radio Times 10 May 42 Hard bop, aggressive, neurotic brand of bop, with a delinquent, flick-knife cutting edge.

1956 G. P. Kurath in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973) 107/1 Jitterbugging..after the forties..took the name of Bop, no matter what music was used.

1970 H. E. Roberts Third Ear 4/2 Bop, a dance.

1982 A. Barr & P. York Official Sloane Ranger Handbk. 97/1 Couples meet at bops or know each other from London.

1951 M. L. Wolf Dict. Arts 573/1 Be-bop and bop, its adherents..are known as bopsters.

1957 New Yorker 26 Oct. 174/2 The hard-boppers employ a heavy or sharply accented beat, a florid, staccato attack, and a hardness of timbre that is in direct contrast to the soft, inky sounds of the cool school.

1965 G. Melly Owning-up vi. 66 A whole row of the audience raised, during Bruce Turner's first alto chorus, a long banner reading ‘go home dirty bopper’.

1958 Daily Tel. 8 Apr. 11/8 Bop, to fight.

1958 Life 28 Apr. 78 You gotta go on bopping (gang fighting) and hanging around street corners all your life?

1958 Daily Tel. 8 Apr. 11/8 Bopping club, a fighting gang.

1959 Listener 29 Jan. 201/2 The ‘turf’ of a well-known ‘bopping club’—and that means the small area of pavement and street called their own by a well-known fighting gang.

1959 H. E. Salisbury Shook-up Generation iii. 49 Arms and armament..are not a problem for bopping gangs.