get laced

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Laced, of a drink, originally refers to coffee being mixed with sugar in the late 1600s. Lace, in this sense, apparently draws on the way threads or tendrils intertwine. This laced extended to mixing other drinks with harder substances, like punch laced with alcohol, by the 1800s.

By the 1970s, laced referred to drugs (e.g., marijuana) being mixed with harder ones, often without users’ knowledge (e.g., cocaine), and, by extension, described people on such drugs (i.e., drunk or high). This sense of get laced also appears to have lent itself to the idea of “getting humiliated,” or owned in slang.

Eminem appears to play on these senses in his often quoted lyric from his 2018 track “Venom”: “But I don’t care, I barely can wait / To hit ’em with the snare and the bass / Square in the face, this fuckin’ world better prepare to get laced / Because they’re gonna taste my—.”

Many fancy, elaborate outfits may lace a person with strands of jewelry, intricate dresses, or even lacy threads, which may help explain how a woman getting laced emerges by the 1980s for a “sophisticated woman” in Black slang. By the 2000s, getting laced evolved to describe someone decked out in bling.

Athletes lace up their shoes before taking to the field, court, or ice, and by extension, anyone gearing up to take on a challenge or opponent may lace up or get laced up. Rapper Machine Gun Kelly got laced in his 2012 track “Get Laced,” in which he tells the rap scene to get ready for him: “And this brand new change comes in the shape of / A 6″ 3′ blonde haired boy, lace up.” Eminem’s “Venom” may also be playing with this sense of laced.