Entry · catalog no. 6216
Nae Nae
/ /neɪ neɪ/ /NAY-nay
noun · Atlanta · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
A hip-hop dance — one arm up, body swaying side to side, hitting a pose on the beat.
“Drop that Nae Nae one time.”
Origin & Attribution
Made by the Atlanta group We Are Toonz, out of Stone Mountain, Georgia, whose 2013 single Drop That #NaeNae named the move. The name nods to Sheneneh, Martin Lawrence''s brash character from his 1990s sitcom. It went national in 2014 — an Atlanta dance, not the faceless viral challenge it is often filed under.
2013
We Are Toonz release Drop That #NaeNae
2014
Goes national via social media
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Atlanta · 2010s
Spoken by
Atlanta, Georgia
$NAENAEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady13 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
70/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2013
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
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
See also