Entry · catalog no. 6877
cuz
/ — /pending
noun · Los Angeles / U.S. West Coast, spreading nationwide through Black street and hip · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
A term of address for a close male friend, associate, or fellow member of one's crew — used the way 'bro' or 'homie' is used, and carrying an implied claim of kinship even where no blood relation exists. In its tightest sense, among Crip-affiliated speakers, it marks in-group membership and mutual protection; in wider Black vernacular use it has loosened into a general, affectionate way to hail any close friend, regardless of gang affiliation.
“"What's good, cuh? Ain't seen you since the summer."”
Origin & Attribution
Rooted in African American speech communities of the mid-20th century, where the old English shortening of 'cousin' (itself dating to 16th-century 'coz') was repurposed as a term of address between Black men. Merriam-Webster's slang dictionary notes that this sense of cuz 'can be traced back to African American speech communities and began appearing in print in the early 1960s,' and that its use as a form of address is tied to members of the Los Angeles Crips. 'Cuh' is a later phonetic clip of 'cuz' that hardened inside West Coast street and gang vocabulary before spreading through hip-hop and
1960s
Cuz begins appearing in print as a term of address within African American speech communities
1970s
Term becomes closely associated with the Los Angeles Crips as an in-group form of address
2010s-2020s
Clipped variant 'cuh' spreads through hip-hop lyrics and social media, reaching mainstream youth slang while still carrying its Black/West Coast origin
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
Los Angeles / U.S. West Coast, spreading nationwide through Black street and hip · 1960s
Spoken by
Black men in street and gang-adjacent social circles, later broadened to Black youth generally and, since the 2010s, ado
$CUZThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising66 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
78/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1960
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.
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@bayarea
Oakland, CA
@ladi
Los Angeles, CA
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Citations & Sources
■
Use of cuz to refer to a male friend traced to African American speech communities, appearing in print in the early 1960s (Merriam-Webster Slang Dictionary)
dictionary entry
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cuz, n. — orig. US black, a form of address between black males; also a member of the Crips gang (Green's Dictionary of Slang)
slang dictionary entry
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+ Cite a sourceCorpus of Regional African American Language recorded example: 'what's up, cuz?' (2015)
linguistic corpus
Also spelled
See also