Entry · catalog no. 1504

locs

/ /lɑks/ /LAHKS

noun · U.S. South and Afro-Caribbean diaspora (Jamaica), with the terminology shift cen · 1990s

✓ Verified

Rope-like sections of hair formed by allowing strands to coil, twist, or mat together over time; the preferred term within Black hair culture for what outsiders often call 'dreadlocks,' used deliberately to strip the style of the old slur baked into that word and to name it instead by what it actually is — locked hair.

“She's been growing her locs for six years, and her loctician retwists them every four weeks.”

Origin & Attribution

Rooted in African and Afro-Caribbean hair traditions carried through the transatlantic slave trade, then re-centered by the Black Power and natural hair movements in the U.S. The word 'locs' itself is a deliberate clip-and-clean of 'dreadlocks,' pushed by Black hairstylists, Rastafari-adjacent communities, and natural-hair advocates from the 1990s onward specifically to drop the 'dread' — a term tied to how enslavers and colonizers described African hair as 'dreadful.' Mainstream beauty media sometimes treats 'locs' as a trendy rebrand or interchangeable synonym, but within the community it is

1993

Dr. JoAnne Cornwell trademarks 'Sisterlocks,' popularizing 'locs' as a standalone term distinct from 'dreadlocks'

2010s

Natural hair movement blogs and stylists push 'locs' as the respectful term, explicitly citing the slur history behind 'dread'

2020s

CROWN Act legislation and continued workplace/school discrimination cases keep 'locs' terminology central to Black hair rights discourse

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The South

U.S. South and Afro-Caribbean diaspora (Jamaica), with the terminology shift cen · 1990s

Spoken by

Black Americans and the wider African diaspora, especially within the natural hair care community, loticians, and Rastaf

$LOCSThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Steady

33 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

1993

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

■

In their 2014 book Hair Story, Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps trace 'dredlocs' to enslaved Africans being called 'dreadful' upon arrival

book

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"Today the preferred name for dreadlocks is locs due to dread's negative connotation"

magazine feature, Ebony, 2022

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"Some prefer 'locs' because 'dreadlock' is rooted in the history of the transatlantic slave trade"

encyclopedia entry, Britannica

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