Online dictionary definitions

According to an April 29, 2021 article by Taylor Lorenz for the New York Times, the word cheugy was coined by Gaby Rasson of Los Angeles, California in 2013.

Online dictionary definitions

Rasson said she invented cheugy when she was looking for a word that describes people who were unsuccessfully trying to be trendy. Rasson said, “There was a missing word that was on the edge of my tongue and nothing to describe it and cheugy came to me.

How it sounded fit the meaning.” 

Cheugy didn’t go viral until years later when it was used by TikTok user Hallie Cain. Cain introduced the word to their followers in a now-private video that was posted on March 30, 2021.

In the video, Cain stated that cheugy was the perfect word to use to describe people who posted TikTok videos in hopes of being trendy or cool but actually came across as cringeworthy (or in slang, cringey).

Thanks to Cain’s video, cheugy started to spread on TikTok with the hashtag #cheugy getting over 10 million views by mid-May.