phat

Phat means excellent, great or impressive, especially in 90s hip-hop slang: a phat beat, a phat ride, phat pants. It’s a deliberate respelling of “fat,” used as a compliment.

What phat means

In its heyday, phat was all-purpose praise: a song with a phat bass line, a phat car, a phat paycheck. In music it still has a specific use, for a sound that’s rich, thick and up front.

It could also describe someone with a curvy, attractive figure, which is one reason to use it with a bit of care.

Examples

• “That bass line is phat.”
• “He pulled up in a phat new car.”
• “Phat pants and platform sneakers: 1997 in one outfit.”

Where it came from

Wiktionary traces it to African American Vernacular English as a deliberate misspelling of fat, and Dictionary.com dates the respelling to the early 1960s. It went mainstream in the 1990s through hip-hop; Nas used it on his 1994 album Illmatic.

You may have heard that PHAT stands for “pretty hot and tempting.” Dictionaries don’t back that up. They treat phat as a respelling of fat, and the acronym as something people made up later.

Related terms

• Da bomb: the best.
• Fire: really good.
• Thicc: curvy, in modern slang.
• Drip: stylish clothes and accessories.

More throwback words are in our 90s slang guide.