Entry · catalog no. 2904
crashout
/ /ˈkræʃ.aʊt/ /KRASH-owt
noun · U.S. South (Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas) · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
A person who acts recklessly and without regard for consequence, often because they feel they have nothing left to lose; also used as a verb ("crash out") to describe the act of snapping — flying into sudden rage, grief, or destructive behavior after being pushed past a breaking point. As a verb it covers everything from a street-level explosion of violence to a filmed public meltdown; as a noun it names the person prone to that behavior or the specific episode itself ("her crash out").
“He's been a crashout since his brother got locked up — no fear left in him at all.”
Origin & Attribution
Rooted in Black Southern vernacular, first documented on Black Twitter and in Baton Rouge, Louisiana street culture, with the earliest attested slang use traced to a 2013 tweet linked to rapper NBA YoungBoy. NBA YoungBoy's 2017 track "Stepped On" carried the line "Crash out if I'm nervous," cementing the term in gang- and street-life contexts across the South (Montgomery, Memphis, Houston). It moved from AAVE oral and street usage into wider Black social media use through the early 2020s before a December 2023 TikTok video pushed it into mainstream Gen Z slang in early 2024 — at which point ma
2013
Earliest documented slang use appears on Twitter, linked to NBA YoungBoy and Baton Rouge street culture
2017
NBA YoungBoy's song "Stepped On" uses the line "Crash out if I'm nervous," spreading the term through Southern rap
2024
A December 2023 TikTok video triggers viral mainstream adoption; original Black users criticize the term's dilution as "gentrified" slang
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
U.S. South (Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas) · 2010s
Spoken by
Black Southern communities, street and hood culture, later Black Twitter/X users, now broadly Gen Z
$CRASHOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Peaked13 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
88/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2013
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
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Crash out if I'm nervous
song lyric, NBA YoungBoy, "Stepped On," 2017
■
calling all crashouts in atlanta
tweet, 2024, cited by Wiktionary
■
+ Cite a sourceto react suddenly with extreme distress or anger
Merriam-Webster slang dictionary entry
See also