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The Slang Dictionary
Definitions exist in a hundred places. Provenance exists almost nowhere. This is a dictionary of the second kind: every term traced back to the speech community that made it, with dated evidence, named sources, and an honest record of what changed on the way into the mainstream.
Most slang has no coiner. It comes from a community, over time, and the earliest surviving citation is usually an accident of who was writing things down. So this dictionary credits communities by name and says plainly when nobody can be crowned. Refusing to crown is an answer here, not a gap.
Please. Used to soften a request or to plead, and in other contexts to register exasperation, disbelief or dismissal, closer to 'oh come on' than to politeness. From English 'I beg'.
An all-purpose Kaaps greeting and affirmative: it opens a conversation, signals agreement or approval mid-conversation, and stands alone as an exclamation of enthusiasm. The WAT also records an adjectival sense, incredible or breathtaking.
A takeaway meal of curry packed into a hollowed-out half or quarter loaf of bread, eaten with the hands and no plate. Named by its filling: mutton bunny, chicken bunny, beans bunny. Originated in Durban and now eaten across South Africa. Definition adapted from Mesthrie's dictionary entry.
Extremely good, said first and mainly of food. From 'busting', in the sense of something so good it overwhelms you.
Immediate future marker: about to, getting ready to. A contraction of 'fixing to', and a grammatical form rather than a slang word, which is why it takes a verb and cannot stand alone.
A greeting: hello. Also in the phrase heita daar (hello there). Recorded by the Dictionary of South African English as urban and especially township usage, and by the 1980s the standard greeting of the mapantsula.
To leave in a hurry. In its now-dominant sense, to emigrate from Nigeria, usually to Europe or North America, in search of study, work or a better living. Also a noun for that outflow as a whole.
Please, and also to do something for someone as an unpaid favour. Recorded as a politeness word by Davids and as an intransitive verb by the DSAE, to help or care for someone. The related kanalawerk is work done for a neighbour or friend as a favour rather than for payment. From Malay karna Allah.
Guys, friends. A Black youth or adult man, and a term of address to one; also lamajita, these guys. One of the most travelled items in the lexicon, current in tsotsitaal varieties well beyond the Gauteng townships where it was first recorded.
Precisely groomed, exactly right, on point. Coined about eyebrows and generalised from there to anything executed perfectly.
Thank you. The traditional expression of thanks in Cape Muslim Afrikaans, from Malay terima kasih. Community writers report it is now receding, increasingly displaced by the Arabic shukran and regarded by younger speakers as old-fashioned, heard more on the Cape Flats than in urban Muslim circles.
Trouble, hassle, a problem or the aggravation that comes with one. Very often used in the fixed negative phrase 'no wahala', meaning no problem, or don't worry about it.
The South African Indian English wh-question pattern: the question word moves to the front, but the subject and auxiliary do not swap places and no dummy 'do' is inserted, with tense staying on the main verb. This uninverted wh-question is the characteristic marker. The same absence of inversion in yes/no questions is NOT distinctive: the cited study notes that pattern is shared with informal English and other non-standard South African varieties.
Alert to racial injustice and the danger it carries. Originally a literal instruction to stay awake and watchful in hostile conditions, not a political posture.
This dictionary is kept by one person. Where a word comes from is a claim about a community, so the honest thing to publish alongside it is how close the person recording it actually stands to that community. That answer is different for every variety here, so it is written out for each one rather than summarised once at the bottom of the page.
I am African, not African-American. This is an act of solidarity on a global issue, not a claim of ownership. Corrections from African-American speakers take precedence over anything recorded here, including over me.
I am African but not Nigerian. Sharing a continent is not sharing a community, and every entry here is recorded from outside this one.
I am South African but not from the Cape Coloured community. Same country, different community. Proximity is not standing: nothing here is written from inside this variety, and where I have it wrong, its speakers are right.
I am South African but not Indian South African. Same country, different community, and a history I can cite but cannot speak for.
Of the varieties here, these are the ones spoken closest to where I live. That is geography, not membership: township varieties are not one thing, and being South African makes none of them mine. Where I am wrong about a term, the correction stands over me.
Corrections from speakers of a variety take precedence over anything recorded here, including over the keeper. The full position.