Entry · catalog no. 8423
slept on
/ /ˈslɛpt ɑn/ /SLEPT on
adjective · Nationwide · 2000s
✓ Verified
1.
Said of a person, artist, place or thing that has not received the attention it deserves and that others have failed to take seriously. To sleep on something is to underestimate or ignore it; to be slept on is to be the one who was underestimated. It is usually said with a note of vindication, as in 'you were wrong not to notice.'
“That album is so slept on; nobody played it when it dropped and it's still better than half the charts.”
Origin & Attribution
A product of Black American vernacular and hip hop talk. Green's Dictionary of Slang labels it US Black slang and gives its earliest citation as 2001, from a magazine line about a rapper called the very slept-on Queen Pen, with a further citation in B. Coleman's Check the Technique (2007). The archive records 2001 as the earliest dated use located; speakers likely used the phrase in speech before it reached print. It has since spread into general internet and youth slang.
2001
Earliest citation located in Green's Dictionary of Slang
2007
Appears in Brian Coleman, Check the Technique
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Nationwide · 2000s
Spoken by
Hip hop artists and fans, and Black American speakers
$SLEPTOThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady25 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
60/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2001
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
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Green's Dictionary of Slang, entry "slept on" (US Black slang; earliest citation 2001)
2001
■
+ Cite a sourceBrian Coleman, Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies (Villard, 2007)
2007
See also