What is happening? WHAT'S GOING DOWN: Hello, what's shakin'?
[1950s+ Jazz musicians; perhaps fr an analogy between shaking and being vigorously alive; the shake was a jazz dance known fr about 1900]
The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D. Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers. Cite This Source