Entry · catalog no. 7417
bool
/ /bul/ /BOOL
adjective · Los Angeles / Compton, California · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
Cool — with the C swapped for a B, per the Blood convention of refusing the letter that starts "Crip." To be bool is to be calm, easy, chilling; boolin' is hanging out. The alphabet itself takes a side.
“We wasn't doing nothing, just boolin' outside the store.”
Origin & Attribution
Los Angeles Blood neighborhoods, where the letter-substitution practice runs back to the gang era of the 1970s and 80s. YG — from Compton's Tree Top Piru — put the convention on record for the mainstream: Still Brazy (2016) carries "Bool, Balm & Bollective" as a track-length demonstration, alongside brazy and bompton.
1970s–80s
Letter-substitution practice forms in LA gang culture
2016
YG's Still Brazy puts bool on the national record
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
Los Angeles / Compton, California · 2010s
Spoken by
LA Blood-affiliated neighborhoods; West Coast rap
$BOOLThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady10 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
65/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2016
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bayarea
Oakland, CA
@ladi
Los Angeles, CA
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See also