Entry · catalog no. 2884
flex
/ — /pending
verb · Nationwide · 2026
✓ Verified
1.
To show off — money, status, a win, a body, whatever you've got. Also a noun for the thing being shown off, as in "weird flex."
“Posting the receipt was a flex and everybody knew it.”
Origin & Attribution
Long-running in hip-hop and African American Vernacular English, where flex carried the sense of showing strength or putting on a display well before the internet. Ice Cube used it, Bow Wow's Def Jam era leaned on it, and it sat in Black speech for decades before "weird flex but ok" made it a meme.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Nationwide · 2026
Spoken by
Nationwide
$FLEXThe 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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
African American Vernacular English, "flex" — reference (Wikipedia AAVE) · entry
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceHip-hop lexicon, "flex" — cultural history · 1990s
submitted
See also