Entry · catalog no. 8867
situationship
/ — /pending
noun · nationwide · 2026
✓ Verified
1.
A relationship in everything but name — the intimacy is real, the commitment was never agreed to, and asking about it is the whole problem.
“Two years in and she finally called it what it was: a situationship.”
Origin & Attribution
Black relationship writing and Black women's online conversation, late 2000s. Blogger Demetria Lucas used it in 2009 answering a reader who wrote in describing a situation rather than a relation. It spread through Black social media across the 2010s and reached the mainstream press and dictionaries in the 2020s, generally described as a Gen Z coinage. It was named by Black women, describing something they were already living.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
nationwide · 2026
Spoken by
nationwide
$SITUATThe 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
■
Demetria Lucas — relationship blog column — blog post · 2009
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceTierica Jemise Gibson — Young Black Women's Experiences in Situationships — master's thesis · 2021
submitted
See also