this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
837 points (97.5% liked)

memes

10310 readers
1703 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Gigan@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (8 children)
[–] randomdeadguy@lemmy.world 31 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] casmael@startrek.website 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] magnetosphere@kbin.social 7 points 10 months ago

“I’m being totally hatless, bro, I swear.”

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

The real revolutionaries

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

This is the way.

[–] CatZoomies@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Millennial here. I’ve heard from the younger folks that it means something like “no lie”, or “I swear this is true”.

Being out of touch, I’m not sure if this is synonymous with “deadass”.

grandpa-Simpson-i-used-to-be-with-it.png

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh, I assumed it meant like no upper bound. "She's the best basketball player, no cap."

I haven't tried to use it, but I guess I was close enough to understand what they were saying.

[–] DanglingFury@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Pretty sure it directly replaces "for real"

[–] darth_tiktaalik@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

I'd like to know the backstory for why "cap" became the slang, not so eager to find out why the asses are dead

[–] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

I'm going to offer my own theory here, which doesn't seem to be in line with the most popular theories which seem to me to be creative guesses at the origin.

I think it's possibly from twitch.tv culture. "Kappa" was a popular emote with a smug face often used to denote sarcasm. Plenty of streamers have used the phrase "No kappa" to indicate they're not joking, and some shortened it to "no kap". Since it was passed on orally, it became mistranscribed to "no cap." People were looking for an explanation for a phrase that didn't exist, and inadvertently invented one, which became the predominant theory that you'll find if you search for "no cap origin."

[–] tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I've heard it in lyrics from long before twitch existed

In Black slang, to cap about something is “to brag,” “to exaggerate,” or “to lie” about it. This meaning of cap dates back to the early 1900s.

https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/no-cap/

Green's Dictionary of Slang - Cap

[–] b34k@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

This was my theory too when I first heard it said. It wasn’t till later when I saw it spelled that I realized it’s “no cap” and not “no kap”.

I still got perfect understanding of the meaning from thinking about it in terms of the Kappa emote.

[–] VulKendov@reddthat.com 2 points 10 months ago

No, I'm pretty sure it came from hip hop culture, like a lot of slang recently. I'm basing this purely my anecdotal observation of the kind of people who use it most frequently.

[–] Gigan@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I'm going to go with this theory, because I at least know what Kappa is

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago

think: "no joke", "s'truth", "for real", "no lie"

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

It's the true-true.

[–] jballs@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

Replace "cap" with "shit" and it means the same thing.

[–] Orbituary@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/no-cap/

Has history in Atlanta black slang from the 1940s. However, "cap" isn't short for anything I can find. (I was hoping "capitulate").