wack
Wack means bad, lame, corny or disappointing. A wack movie isn’t worth watching; a wack excuse doesn’t hold up. It’s also spelled whack.
What wack means
It’s an all-purpose thumbs-down: low quality, uncool, unfair or just a letdown. “That ending was wack.” “It’s wack that they canceled the show.” Merriam-Webster defines it as of poor skill or quality.
A “wack job” (or whack job) is someone who seems unhinged, a related but separate use. Dictionary.com even records a rarer sense of wack meaning extremely good, so context does a lot of work here.
Examples
- “That movie was wack. I want my two hours back.”
- “It’s wack how expensive concert tickets are now.”
- “Every song on that album is wack except the first one.”
Where it came from
Wiktionary treats wack as a back-formation from wacky and labels it originally African American Vernacular English slang. In hip-hop, calling a rapper wack has long been a standard put-down.
Both spellings are used for the slang, though “whack” also means to hit something hard.
Related terms
More throwback words are in our 90s slang guide.
Example sentence
They canceled the concert at the last minute? That’s wack.
Similar words
lame, bad, corny, mid
Notes
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