Entry · catalog no. 6647
deadass
/ /ˈdɛd.æs/ /DED-ass
adverb · New York City · 2000s
✓ Verified
1.
Completely serious; no exaggeration. Placed before or after a claim to vouch for it, or standing alone as a question or a confirmation.
“I'm deadass — I saw him at the bodega this morning.”
Origin & Attribution
New York City Black speech. "Dead" had intensified "serious" in American slang since mid-century, but the compressed form belongs to NYC's Black and Latino neighborhoods, circulating through Harlem, Brooklyn, and Bronx speech in the 1990s and reaching written record by 2003 — years before social media adopted it.
1990s
Circulates in New York Black and Latino speech
2000s
Standard emphatic in NYC hip-hop and everyday talk
2010s
Spreads nationally via social media
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
New York City · 2000s
Spoken by
New York Black and Latino speakers; spread nationally
$DEADASThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising31 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
85/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1995
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Urban Dictionary, earliest "deadass" entry — crowd-sourced record · 2003
submitted
■
Dictionary.com slang entry, "deadass" — reference · 2018
submitted
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+ Cite a sourceTime Out New York, "12 words that originated in NYC" — article · 2024
submitted
See also