'Rock' meaning 'wear' or 'sport'

[William Salmon]

>> Still, the evolution of the "wear with panache or pride" sense is
>> intriguing. There's clearly a connection with OED sense 5c, "cause to
>> move with musical rhythm" (with latent sexual connotations, all the
>> way back to Trixie Smith's 1922 "My Man Rocks Me with One Steady
>> Roll"). Objects for this sense can either be people or spaces with
>> people in them (rock the joint/house/party/casbah). But early hiphop
>> usage extended the verb to other objects, most notably "the
>> mic(rophone)" (back to "Rapper's Delight" in 1979: "I'm gonna rock the
>> mic 'til you can't resist"). "Rock the mic" = "rap admirably" is not
>> yet reflected in the OED entry for "rock", but I see it as a vital
>> link to the "wear proudly" sense, since it opened up the possibility
>> for other rap accoutrements to be taken as objects of the verb --
>> like, for instance, the Adidas sneakers of Run-DMC and their fans c.
>> 1986.
>>
>> "My Adidas" came out in 1986, and here's a scene from a Run-DMC
>> concert the following year:
>>
>> "Then, Run-DMC yelled out, 'Okay, everybody in the house, rock your
>> Adidas.' On cue, three thousand pairs of Adidas shot in to the air.
>> (Christopher Vaughn, "Simmons' Rush for Profits," Black Enterprise,
>> December 1992, 67, quoted by Naomi Klein, _No Logo_, 2000)
>>
>> So there it seems to be more about displaying than wearing proudly.

I think this description works for the following uses too, where the
object is a person's own body, and the point seems to be at minimum to
display it.

I don?t know why Salma hasn?t been out rockin that body she?s got.
It sucks for us since she?s got an amazing body to look at

Britney Spears is rocking that new body and she is FINALLY divorcing
Kevin Federline.

We love that she's rocking her new body, but we're not really feeling
the Beyonce armpit pose.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org