deadass — Meaning
Meaning seriously or for real, from New York slang. Used to emphasize that you are not joking. Example usage: "I deadass thought it was a joke." Deadass is the brainrot term that carried New York regional dialect to national Gen Z vocabulary. The word originated in New York City slang — particularly in Brooklyn — where ``deadass'' has been used to mean ``seriously'' or ``literally'' for decades. A New Yorker saying ``I deadass almost missed my train'' means they genuinely, truly almost missed it — no exaggeration, no joke, completely serious. The term is a compound: ``dead'' as an intensifier (meaning completely, absolutely) plus ``ass'' as a suffix that adds emphasis in AAVE-influenced dialects. The construction is similar to ``bad ass'' or ``big ass'' — the suffix turns an adjective into a stronger, more colloquial version. ``Deadass'' thus means ``dead serious'' rendered in street dialect. The word's migration from New York regionalism to general internet slang was driven by the concentration of New York content creators on TikTok and Vine before it.