An entry for the term was recently added to Among the New Words, a dictionary that is part of a quarterly instalment of the journal American Speech. It described “crash out” as “a feeling beyond tiredness, a frustration or exhaustion toward something or someone that you throw all care out the window and have a full blown outburst”. (“Crash out” was a runner-up for the publication’s 2024 word of the year; “rawdog” took the title.)
Philip Lindsay, a 31-year-old special-education teacher and content creator who goes by Mr Lindsay on social media, said he has heard the phrase used mostly as a signal from students that they’re frustrated.
“It’s kind of this forewarning of like, ‘Hey you’re annoying me. I’m going to crash out,’” he said, “or like, ‘This project I’m working on is going to make me crash out.’”
Lindsay said he started hearing the term used about a year and a half ago among his students, reserved for cases of extreme overreaction. Now, he said, it’s used more casually to voice annoyances, and he hears it among parents, teachers and even friends.
“Some of the terms that the kids use, like skibidi – like if a 30-year-old says something’s skibidi, it feels out of a place,” he said, “whereas crash out for some reason feels more appropriate.”
As with many slang terms, the origins of the phrase are murky, but many social media users have credited it as starting in African American English.
Kelly Elizabeth Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the lead editor of Among the New Words, said it can be difficult to pinpoint when a phrase is created, and whether or not the language comes from African American Language or if it is just used within Black communities.
References to “crash out” online go as far back as a Twitter post from 2013, according to the entry in Among the New Words. The entry noted that many have attributed the usage to YoungBoy Never Broke Again, a rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“I don’t think that it’s inaccurate to say that Black Twitter and other online spaces were using these terms maybe first or more visibly than when it was floating around in high school classrooms all across the country this year,” Wright said. “I also don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that young people online are using this term. I think both things can be true at the same time.”
Wright said the process of terminology being picked up by new communities is a regular function of the way that language evolves. But the internet has made that change wider reaching and more visible.
“It’s moving a lot quicker, and it’s moving globally in a way that it hasn’t before,” she said.
Aside from its growth online, the phrase has also become a common part of everyday speech for younger generations.
Toni Marmo, a 24-year-old content creator, said the term has become part of the way she and her friends talk about emotional moments. Saying “freaked out” isn’t a “thing” anymore, she said.
This sentiment has been echoed by several social media users, including Gazelle Chavez, 24, who noted that the phrase put a name to an experience that felt familiar.
“I like that there’s a term for it now,” Chavez said. “But I kind of feel like we’ve always been crashing out. We maybe just didn’t know the word for it.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Nicole Stock
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
