Entry · catalog no. 7918
thot
/ /θɑt/ /thawt
noun · Chicago's South and West Sides, out of the drill scene · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
A promiscuous woman — from "that ho over there." A pointed, often demeaning label; documented plainly here as it is used, charged weight and all.
“They tried to write her off as a thot.”
Origin & Attribution
Thot came out of Chicago drill around 2012, a scene made mostly by teenagers on the South and West Sides who were building a vocabulary as fast as they were building a sound. The earliest known recording of it is a woman's — Katie Got Bandz put it on "Ridin' Round and We Drillin'" that March, and a second Chicago single, TKO's "I Need a Thot," followed in April, before the word reached Urban Dictionary in December. By 2014 it had left Chicago entirely and become a national insult with no address attached to it. The acronym is argued over even by the people who used it first: Katie Got Bandz gave it as "that ho out there," not "that ho over there," which is what usually happens when a word is spoken for a year or two before anyone bothers to write it down.
2012
Katie Got Bandz, "Ridin' Round and We Drillin'," first known song use (March)
2012
First Urban Dictionary definition posted (December 5)
2014
National press coverage; the word goes fully mainstream and loses its address
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Midwest
Chicago's South and West Sides, out of the drill scene · 2010s
Spoken by
Chicago drill rappers and the teenagers around them
$THOTThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Fading14 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
2012
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
@chitown
Chicago, IL
@detlex
Detroit, MI
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
David Drake, "Thot Topic: A New Slang Term Is Sweeping the Nation," Complex, 2014
magazine feature
■
Katie Got Bandz, "Ridin' Round and We Drillin'," 2012
drill single
■
+ Cite a sourceMerriam-Webster Slang & Trending, "thot"
dictionary entry
See also