Entry · catalog no. 7306
tryna
/ /ˈtraɪ.nə/ /TRY-nuh
verb · nationwide · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
Trying to — and, by extension, wanting to or down for. Compresses "trying to" into a syllable and a half.
“I'm tryna get my money right this year. You tryna link up later?”
Origin & Attribution
African American Vernacular English. Part of the same family of streamlined verb forms as "finna" (fixing to) and "gon'" (going to), built by the ordinary phonetic economy of Black speech. Documented in linguistic accounts of AAVE such as Lisa Green's African American English (2002) and carried nationwide through hip-hop.
1990s
Standard AAVE contraction in speech
2002
Documented in linguistic work on AAVE
2010s
Spreads nationally via hip-hop and texting
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
nationwide · 1990s
Spoken by
Black American speakers nationwide
$TRYNAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising36 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
1990
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
■
+ Cite a sourceLisa J. Green, African American English: A Linguistic Introduction — book · 2002
book
See also