Hyphy

//ˈhaɪfiː// adj, noun, slang

adj, noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A subgenre of hip-hop music and dancing associated with the San Francisco Bay Area. uncountable

    "It was Oakland rapper Keak Da Sneak who claims to have invented the term: upon being told by his mother that he was “hyperactive”, Keak repeated the term as “hyphy”. Since then, hyphy has come to refer to a complex group of cultural activities synonymous with Oakland: it is at once a sound, a behavior, a choice in recreational drugs."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Rambunctious, loud, crazy, dangerous, irrational, and outrageous in behavior. slang

    "She was so hyphy outside the club Saturday night, she nearly punched a cop!"

  2. 2
    Of or relating to the hyphy music subgenre or culture.

    "Oakland is the place to look for 'hyphy' (hyperactive) New Bay hip-hop, while SoCal is still riding the 'crunk' (crazy-drunk) drum and bass beats with […]"

Synonyms

All synonyms
rambunctious

Example

More examples

"She was so hyphy outside the club Saturday night, she nearly punched a cop!"

Etymology

Probably an alteration of hype or hyper. American rapper Keak da Sneak is sometimes credited as coining the word in the 1990s, but no evidence exists to support this and the term is first attested in 2002.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.