Alejandra Toro was struggling. Everything was going wrong at the same time, she was overwhelmed and she felt as if she was about to have a meltdown. She was crashing out.
Ms. Toro, a 30-year-old project manager, documented her “crash out” in a video that has raced to more than 600,000 views, joining the ranks of countless TikTok users who have employed some iteration of the phrase to describe their burst of emotions — and at times, intentional overreactions.
“It’s a joking way to explain, like, this could get really bad, really quick,” Ms. Toro said in an interview.
There’s no precise definition of the phrase, and both the severity of its meaning and its use cases seem to run the gamut. A fiery confrontation with an ex, an irritated exchange with a parent or a full emotional breakdown can all qualify. But its popularity is undeniable.
An entry for the term was recently added to Among the New Words, a dictionary that is part of a quarterly installment of the journal American Speech. It described “crash out” as “a feeling beyond tiredness, a frustration or exhaustion toward something or someone that you throw all care out the window and have a full blown outburst.” (“Crash out” was a runner-up for the publication’s 2024 word of the year — “rawdog” took the title.)
Philip Lindsay, a 31-year-old special education teacher and content creator who goes by Mr. Lindsay on social media, said he has heard the phrase used mostly as a signal from students that they’re frustrated.
“It’s kind of this forewarning of like, ‘Hey you’re annoying me, I’m going to crash out,’” he said, “or like, ‘This project I’m working on is going to make me crash out.’”
Mr. Lindsay said that he started hearing the term used about a year and a half ago among his students, reserved for cases of extreme overreaction. Now, he said, it’s used more casually to voice annoyances, and he hears it among parents, teachers and even friends.
“Some of the terms that the kids use, like skibidi — like if a 30-year-old says something’s skibidi, it feels out of a place,” he said. “Whereas crash out for some reason feels more appropriate.”
As with many slang terms, the origins of the phrase are murky, but many social media users have credited it as starting in African American Language.
Kelly Elizabeth Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the lead editor of Among the New Words, said that it can be difficult to pinpoint when a phrase is created, and whether or not the language comes from African American Language or if it is just used within Black communities.
References to “crash out” online go as far back as a Twitter post from 2013, according to the entry in Among the New Words. The entry noted that many have attributed the usage to YoungBoy Never Broke Again, a rapper from Baton Rouge, La.
“I don’t think that it’s inaccurate to say that Black Twitter and other online spaces were using these terms maybe first or more visibly than when it was floating around in high school classrooms all across the country this year,” Dr. Wright said. “I also don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that young people online are using this term. I think both things can be true at the same time.”
The process of terminology being picked up by new communities is a regular function of the way that language evolves, Dr. Wright said. But the internet has made that change wider-reaching and more visible.
“It’s moving a lot quicker and it’s moving globally in a way that it hasn’t before,” she said.
Aside from its growth online, the phrase has also become a common part of everyday speech for younger generations.
Toni Marmo, a 24-year-old content creator, said the term had become part of the way she and her friends talked about emotional moments. Saying “freaked out” isn’t a “thing” anymore, she said.
This sentiment has been echoed by several social media users, including Gazelle Chavez, 24, who noted that the phrase put a name to an experience that already felt familiar.
“I like that there’s a term for it now,” Ms. Chavez said. “But I kind of feel like we’ve always been crashing out, we maybe just didn’t know the word for it.”
Nicole Stock reports on internet culture and other lifestyle news for the Style section of The Times.
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