grammatical form
finna
also: fixin' to, fixing to, fitna, finta
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.
Where it comes from
No one person coined this.
It comes from Black Southern speech communities. The record credits the speech community and the earliest citation that proves it, because African American Vernacular English was made by a community over time and not in a moment anyone wrote down.
Recorded in hip-hop lyrics from the late 1980s. Its parent form 'fixing to' is attested in Southern American English from the mid-1800s, and 'fixing' meaning 'to intend' from the 1700s. Oral use in Black Southern speech long predates every one of those records: the date below is when the writing starts, not when the speaking did.
Carried further by TikTok and Twitter users (Jan 2020). Recorded, never authoritative.
What changed on the way out
Circulated from 2020 as generic 'Gen Z slang' with no attribution to Black Southern English, which is the erasure pattern this Index exists to interrupt.
In use
Recorded means somebody said it and it was written down. Constructed means it was written here to show the shape of the word, and is an illustration rather than evidence.
- constructed
“I'm finna head out.”
I am about to leave.
- constructed
“She finna say something.”
She is on the verge of speaking.
The evidence
Community voices first, then the sources closest to the community. Press and dictionary citations are evidence about a word’s spread, not its origin.
- community explanationcommunity voice
pancocojams: Partial Timeline For The African American Vernacular English (AAVE) Word 'Finna'
- scholarship
Work on the semantics of finna, fitna and finta relative to gonna and bouta (University of Chicago)
- dictionary
Something wrong here? Correct it. Corrections from speakers of a variety take precedence over anything recorded here.