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The word \u201csimp\u201d isn\u2019t new. In fact, it\u2019s pretty old.<\/p>\n
But it has been dragged into fresh popularity. In the same way that older songs can find new audiences on TikTok, older slang emerges on the app to be championed by a broader, younger audience.<\/p>\n
Too Short<\/a>, the bawdy West Coast rapper who used the word in lyrics as early as 1985, said that he was not surprised that the word is more popular than ever.<\/p>\n \u201cIt still means the same thing,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I was in a room with a bunch of 20-somethings or even teenagers, I would expect them to know what I\u2019m talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n Simp\u2019s new status as a prime insult \u2014 a misogynist one, that implies a person is \u201cunmanly\u201d \u2014 has lasted most of a year. Mel Magazine, an online journal quick to note new cultural trends, deeply dissected the resurgence in October.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The \u201cNew Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English,\u201d defines it as a shortened version of simpleton, so the phrase\u2019s original meaning is rooted in calling someone stupid. The dictionary lists its first known usage as 1946, though it appeared in The New York Times as early as 1923.<\/p>\n The most recent entry in the dictionary dates to the 2000 novel \u201cMy Once Upon a Time,\u201d by the British novelist Diran Adebayo, where \u201csimp\u201d appears twice in the first 20 pages.<\/p>\n Mr. Adebayo said he had used it to inject an old-fashioned noir tone into the book.<\/p>\n \u201cSimp would have been used in an old-school way,\u201d he said. \u201cNot the other way it\u2019s been used as a very soft kind of man, who is very soft to his female friends.\u201d<\/p>\n That newer sense of the word \u2014 as an insult for being \u201csoft\u201d or \u201coverly sympathetic,\u201d particularly to women \u2014 became more prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s. A set of West Coast rappers who regularly addressed pimping, including Hugh-E. M. C., Too Short and E-40, started using it in their songs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cTo me it\u2019s like the opposite of the pimp,\u201d Too Short said. \u201cIt really degrades the person who you\u2019re aiming it at.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He added that it evoked the sense of something counterfeit: \u201cLike you\u2019re a knockoff pimp.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Evolution of Simp<\/h2>\n