Entry · catalog no. 1312
flossin
/ /ˈflɔsɪn/ /FLAW-sin
verb · Black Los Angeles first, in the early 1990s; national through hip-hop by the late 1990s, with New Orleans pushing the money sense hardest · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
To cruise, coast, be at ease. The older West Coast sense, and the one attested first.
“Sun went down, I hit the strip, now I am just flossin.”
2.
To show off wealth or status; to flaunt.
“He was flossin so hard at the reunion nobody could hear the music.”
3.
To fake it — to display a status you do not actually have.
“Half these people out here flossin on a rented chain.”
Origin & Attribution
African American Vernacular English, with the earliest attestations from Los Angeles in the early 1990s and the wealth-display sense pushed nationally by the New Orleans and Cash Money axis later in the decade. The two senses are not one sense: the earliest citation is the relaxed, cruising meaning, and any entry that defines flossin only as flaunting has skipped its own first evidence. The etymology is unresolved — either a figurative use of ordinary dental floss or an elision of flourish. Both are conjecture and the archive asserts neither. One claim circulating widely online should be rejected outright: that a 1997 song called "Flossin" by the Cash Money Millionaires popularized the term. No such record could be found, the Cash Money Millionaires name was not in use in 1997, and the claim appears to be machine-generated misinformation now propagating through blogs. This is also not the 2017 Floss dance, which has a separate lineage entirely.
1992
Dr. Dre's "Let Me Ride," on The Chronic released December 15, carries the earliest verifiable use — in the cruising sense
1998
Juvenile's "Flossin' Season" appears on 400 Degreez, released November 3 on Cash Money
2000
William Shaw's Westsiders prints a contemporaneous prose gloss for the faking-it sense
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The West
Black Los Angeles first, in the early 1990s; national through hip-hop by the late 1990s, with New Orleans pushing the money sense hardest · 1990s
Spoken by
Black Los Angeles first; then hip-hop nationally, and everybody watching somebody else's chain
$FLOSSIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady34 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1992
in the culture
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
@bayarea
Oakland, CA
@ladi
Los Angeles, CA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Dr. Dre — "Let Me Ride," The Chronic — Death Row/Interscope · 15 Dec 1992
On my way to the strip, now I'm just flossin — the earliest attestation verified, and in the relax-and-cruise sense
■
Juvenile — "Flossin' Season," 400 Degreez — Cash Money/Universal · 3 Nov 1998
Produced by Mannie Fresh; the record that tied the word to money
■
+ Cite a sourceWilliam Shaw — Westsiders — book · 2000
p. 218; a dated prose definition tying flossin to pretending to be something you are not
See also