Entry · catalog no. 7328
turnt
/ /tɝːnt/ /TURNT
adjective · U.S. South (Atlanta) · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
Wild, amped-up, high-energy — the state of being fully in the moment at a party, function, or turn-up, whether from music, liquor, weed, adrenaline, or just the crowd itself. It describes both a person ("I'm turnt") and an atmosphere ("the function was turnt"), and while it often implies intoxication, the core meaning is about collective energy crossing from ordinary into unrestrained.
“We pulled up to the cookout and it was already turnt — DJ had the whole block outside.”
Origin & Attribution
Grew out of Southern, especially Atlanta, Black vernacular as a past-participle variant of "turned" (as in "turned up"), following a grammatical pattern common in African American English where certain irregular-feeling past tenses get respelled to match their pronunciation. Corporate and pop-culture coverage frequently treats it as a 2010s internet coinage, but rap-lyric databases place plain "turnt" as early as 1995 and "turnt up" by 1998, meaning the word was circulating in Black Southern speech and mixtape culture well over a decade before platforms like Vine, Twitter, and BuzzFeed popular
1995
Earliest documented use of 'turnt' appears in rap lyrics tracked by online rhyme databases.
2005
Urban Dictionary user Erica Peters posts a definition of 'turnt' tied to drinking and excitement.
2009-2010
New Boyz's song 'Turnt' and Roscoe Dash's 'All the Way Turnt Up' push the word into national hip-hop and pop awareness.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
U.S. South (Atlanta) · 1990s
Spoken by
Black Southern youth and hip-hop/trap communities originally; now used broadly by younger Americans across racial lines,
$TURNTThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady31 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
72/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1995
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
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
the earliest tweet I found was one from December 2008
linguistic column, Vocabulary.com
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I'm from Atlanta, we say, 'I'm turnt up on this'
TV interview, Chelsea Lately (Ciara), 2013
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+ Cite a sourceRap Genius...has turnt up in its database of rap lyrics as early as 1998, and just plain turnt from 1995
lyric-database analysis, Vocabulary.com
Also spelled
See also