"thug life" meaning in English

See thug life in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: thug lives [plural]
Etymology: Popularised by American rapper Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) in 1993. Head templates: {{en-noun|~|thug lives}} thug life (countable and uncountable, plural thug lives)
  1. (often ironic) A life in which one has to go through many struggles, like that of poor gangstas. Wikipedia link: Tupac Shakur Tags: countable, ironic, often, uncountable
    Sense id: en-thug_life-en-noun-3NRXnc4o Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for thug life meaning in English (1.9kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Popularised by American rapper Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) in 1993.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "thug lives",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~",
        "2": "thug lives"
      },
      "expansion": "thug life (countable and uncountable, plural thug lives)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I didn’t choose the thug life. It chose me.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1996 September 22, Wayne Johnson, “Thug Life – Why This Raised So Much Hell”, in soc.culture.african.american (Usenet)",
          "text": "Too many young Black men have adopted this thug life pose.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, Black Dot, Hip Hop Decoded: From Its Ancient Origin to Its Modern Day Matrix, page 165",
          "text": "For all of these rappers claiming to live the thug life, there's really no difference.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Michael Jeffries, Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop, page 107",
          "text": "Whether death refers to biological death or serves as a metaphor for oppression and marginalization (social death), the potential for collective reconciliation with death is linked to his identity as a nigga living thug life.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A life in which one has to go through many struggles, like that of poor gangstas."
      ],
      "id": "en-thug_life-en-noun-3NRXnc4o",
      "links": [
        [
          "life",
          "life"
        ],
        [
          "struggle",
          "struggle"
        ],
        [
          "poor",
          "poor"
        ],
        [
          "gangsta",
          "gangsta"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(often ironic) A life in which one has to go through many struggles, like that of poor gangstas."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "ironic",
        "often",
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Tupac Shakur"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "thug life"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Popularised by American rapper Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) in 1993.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "thug lives",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~",
        "2": "thug lives"
      },
      "expansion": "thug life (countable and uncountable, plural thug lives)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English uncountable nouns",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "I didn’t choose the thug life. It chose me.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1996 September 22, Wayne Johnson, “Thug Life – Why This Raised So Much Hell”, in soc.culture.african.american (Usenet)",
          "text": "Too many young Black men have adopted this thug life pose.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, Black Dot, Hip Hop Decoded: From Its Ancient Origin to Its Modern Day Matrix, page 165",
          "text": "For all of these rappers claiming to live the thug life, there's really no difference.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, Michael Jeffries, Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop, page 107",
          "text": "Whether death refers to biological death or serves as a metaphor for oppression and marginalization (social death), the potential for collective reconciliation with death is linked to his identity as a nigga living thug life.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A life in which one has to go through many struggles, like that of poor gangstas."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "life",
          "life"
        ],
        [
          "struggle",
          "struggle"
        ],
        [
          "poor",
          "poor"
        ],
        [
          "gangsta",
          "gangsta"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(often ironic) A life in which one has to go through many struggles, like that of poor gangstas."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "ironic",
        "often",
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Tupac Shakur"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "thug life"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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