Is no cap the best slang word in English? Vote in the March Madness Slang Bracket contest! For example, some professional athletes have no (salary) cap on how much they can be paid. No cap was popularized in 2017 when Atlanta-based rappers Young Thug & Future released the track “No Cap.” In the song, the rappers boast about all the wealth and swag they’ve acquired, no cap, including clothes, cars, and jewelry.Ĭalling back to the slang cap‘s roots, no cap can also more generally mean “no limit,” with cap here meaning “a maximum” and often referring to prices or money. It appears on Twitter by at least 2012, though it was almost certainly in use in spoken English before then. So, no cap has the sense of “no lie,” “no joke,” “for real,” or “not bragging.” The expression is closely associated with slang in Atlanta-area hip-hop. These terms appear to be rooted in the sense of cap as “top” or “upper limit.” History lesson: In the 1940s, according to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, to cap is evidenced as slang meaning “to surpass,” connected to the ritualized insults of capping (1960s). This meaning of cap dates back to the early 1900s. In Black slang, to cap about something is “to brag,” “to exaggerate,” or “to lie” about it.
