Etymology Journal ยท W
What's crackalackin'?
Meaning
- An energetic way to ask someone how they are doing or what is happening. It has a distinctly early 2000s, slightly suburban flavor.
High energy, dated
Used in a sentence
- My nephew ran into the house yelling, what's crackalackin' to his cousins.
- When I sent a text asking, what's crackalackin', I did not expect a serious reply.
- The youth group leader tried to sound cool by shouting, what's crackalackin' to the teenagers.
The backstory
The term likely evolved from African American Vernacular English and gained mainstream pop-culture popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is a rhyming slang derivative of asking what is happening.
Heard in
Nationwide
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