Etymology

crash out

Today it means: To fall asleep from exhaustion. Full definition →

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The story

From crash + out. References online to the slang sense go as far back as a Twitter post from 2013, attributed to YoungBoy Never Broke Again, a rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Popularized by a December 2023 viral TikTok video. The earliest clear printed use turns up in a 1940 crime novel called High Sierra by W. R. Burnett. A character sits thinking about escape and says: All I thought about was a crash out. I tried it once.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.