Twerking Competition 2015, Riga, Latvia

Twerking (/ˈtwɜːrkɪŋ/) is a type of dancing in which an individual, usually a female, dances to music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low squatting stance. Though the term seems to be of uncertain origin with common assumptions suggesting it represents a contraction of "footwork" or a portmanteau of the words "twist" and "jerk", the Oxford Dictionaries blog says "the most likely theory is that it is an alteration of work, because that word has a history of being used in similar ways, with dancers being encouraged to "work it". The "t" could be a result of blending with another word such as twist or twitch." 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. Since the late 1990s, twerking was associated with bounce music of Southern hip hop 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. According to Oxford dictionary, the word has been around for 20 years. The word was a runner-up in the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013.
Background
The dance move originates from West Africa (for instance the mapouka dance) and has been around for several generations. It was then adopted by African American culture in the 1990s. The dance originally was not done with sexual intent until it hit the hip hop scene in America in the early 1990s, where it became sexualized as part of the hip hop industry performed by video models in rap videos. Twerking can carry both gendered and racialized connotations; given its origins and the dance itself it is often associated with Black women, as the Samba dance is with Latino women. In the United States, twerking was introduced into hip-hop culture by way of the New Orleans bounce music scene. In 1993, DJ Jubilee recorded the dance tune "Do The Jubilee All" in which he chanted, "Twerk baby, twerk baby, twerk, twerk, twerk." The video for the song increased the popularity of twerking. In 1995, New Orleans-based rapper Cheeky Blakk recorded the song "Twerk Something!" a call-and-response dance song dedicated to twerking. In 1997, DJ Jubilee recorded "Get Ready, Ready" in which he encouraged listeners to "Twerk it!".