Entry · catalog no. 9123
bruh
/ — /pending
noun · south · 2026
✓ Verified
1.
Brother — as an address to a friend, and, drawn out on its own, as a full sentence of disbelief, disappointment, or resignation.
“Bruh. You really left the keys in the car.”
Origin & Attribution
Black Southern speech, documented as a title meaning brother by 1894 — Bruh Rabbit, Bruh Bear — and carried through the jazz era as an ordinary form of address. Hip-hop spread it nationally in the 1990s; the 2010s turned it into a standalone interjection. Merriam-Webster added it in 2017. The internet meme is a hundred and twenty years downstream of the word.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
south · 2026
Spoken by
south
$BRUHThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising0 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
12/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2026
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
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
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
Oxford English Dictionary, entry "bruh, n." — reference · ongoing
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceMerriam-Webster, entry "bruh" — dictionary addition · 2017
submitted
See also