''Gyat'' ( /ɡjɑːt/; an abbreviation of ''Goddamn'', also spelled as ''Gyatt'' or ''Gyattt'', pronounced ; ) is a term from

African-American Vernacular English African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...

originally used in exclamation. In the 2020s, the word experienced a semantic shift and gained the additional meaning of "a person, usually a woman, with large buttocks and sometimes an hourglass figure". With slightly varying definitions, ''Gyat'' garnered virality on the social media platform TikTok in 2022 in part due to its frequent use by various

online streamers An online streamer or live streamer is a person who broadcasts themselves online through a live stream to an audience. History Streaming arose in the early 2010s, originating on sites like YouTube where users could upload videos of themselves i ...

. It has become an

internet meme An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...

, particularly employed and popularized by Generation Alpha.

Etymology

According to American linguist John McWhorter, the term "evolved from 'goddamn'." According to Kelly Elizabeth Wright, a research fellow in language sciences at Virginia Tech, the provenance of ''Gyat'' has been considered to be Black Southern, Jamaican, among other communities of the

African diaspora The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were e ...

. The term is attributed to having roots of

2022 semantic shift

The current meaning of the term ''Gyat'' was coined by online streamer YourRAGE, who used it to describe a physically attractive woman, and it was popularized by Kai Cenat, an American Twitch Streamer. On October 2, 2023, a TikTok account under the username @ovp.9 posted a short video of a character from the online video game Fortnite "singing" to a

musical parody Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or copying existing (usually well known) musical ideas, and/or lyrics, or copying the particular style of a composer or performer, or even a music genre, general style of music. In music, parody ...

of the 2021 song "ecstacy" by Suicidal-Idol. The parody featured multiple internet culture terms, including ''

Skibidi Toilet ''Skibidi Toilet'' is a machinima web series of YouTube videos and shorts created by Alexey Gerasimov and uploaded on his YouTube channel '. Produced using Source Filmmaker, the series follows a fictional war between human-headed toilets and h ...

'' and '' rizz''. According to '' The New York Times'', the parody is cited as "a key" to the popularization of ''Gyat''. Backronyms have been created for the term like "Girl Your Ass Is Thick", "Girl You Ate That", "Get Your Act Together", among others.

Usage

According to '' Legit.ng'', the term is commonly used by "guys when they see a girl, usually with a curvy body type," and can also be used to indicate enthusiasm or excitement. ''Gyat'' is characterized in the media as a term used both by Generation Alpha and

Generation Z Generation Z (or more commonly Gen Z for short), colloquially known as zoomers, is the Western world, Western demography, demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular me ...

. However, some members of Generation Z have stated that they do not attribute the term to their cohort. According to '' The Today Show'', the term is used verbally and on messaging platforms such as Discord, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, and YouTube.

Reception and impact

''Gyat'' has been described as one of the early slang terms predominantly popularized by Generation Alpha: according to the '' New York Post'', comments to a viral TikTok video about the term "deemed that Gen Z was out of touch regarding current lingo." Alongside its attribution with Generation Alpha, ''Gyat'' has been of interest to digital marketers in consideration of the cohort's emerging consumer consumption. The term was nominated for the American Dialect Society's ''2023 Word of The Year''.American Dialect Society Selects “enshittification” as 2023 Word of the Year.
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References

External links

* {{Generation Z slang Internet slang 2020s slang 2022 neologisms Internet memes introduced in 2022 Generation Alpha slang 2022 in Internet culture