Entry · catalog no. 4154
pause
/ /pɔz/ /PAWZ
interjection · Harlem, New York City · 2000s
✓ Verified
1.
A one-word check called out right after a sentence that could be heard as sexual or homoerotic, used by the speaker or a listener to flag the double meaning, laugh it off, and move the conversation along without anyone having to actually address what was just implied. It functions less as an apology than as a verbal wink — an acknowledgment that everybody caught the slip, followed by tacit permission to keep talking like it never happened.
“I need somebody to hold my package for me... pause, y'all know what I meant.”
Origin & Attribution
'Pause' grew out of the same Harlem street-corner and schoolyard banter that produced 'no homo,' with the Dipset camp — Cam'ron, Jim Jones, and Juelz Santana — carrying it from block talk into interviews and records in the early 2000s, after which the wider rap world picked it up as a running gag. Ghostface Killah has since pushed back on the idea that it started as anti-gay panic, tracing the underlying wordplay to older prison and street-corner slang where a 'pause' broke up any line that could be twisted into something 'sexual' — sexual not always meaning homosexual — long before the intern
2002-2003
Harlem's Dipset crew (Cam'ron, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana) popularizes 'pause' alongside 'no homo' in interviews and freestyles, per accounts from TheGrio and hip-hop press.
2010
The Boondocks airs an episode titled 'Pause' satirizing the phrase's use as a shield against perceived homosexuality.
2024
'No Diddy' emerges as a viral variant of 'pause'/'no homo' following allegations against Sean Combs, spreading rapidly on TikTok and in Gucci Mane's song 'TakeDat (No Diddy).'
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem, New York City · 2000s
Spoken by
Black men in hip-hop and street culture, later spread to Black youth nationwide and beyond
$PAUSEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady24 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
58/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2002
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
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
'Pause' and 'no homo' gained their popularity when Harlem-based rap crew Dipset started using the phrases in their music and interviews, around 2002/3
TheGrio op-ed, 2011
■
Saying 'pause' is like a rite of passage in early Black New York slang
Vice article quoting Ghostface Killah, 2025
■
+ Cite a source'No Diddy' or 'Pause No Diddy' is a slang phrase meaning 'no homo' or 'pause'
Daily Dot explainer, 2024
See also