shook

The earliest account of the word shook (as past tense of shake) goes back to Old English … it’s old.

We can find the figurative shook, or extremely upset or moved in some way, in the 1800s. It can be positive or negative, such as being shook with a religious experience or being shook by a catastrophe. In the 19th century, shook was also slang for “drunk” among some Australian, Irish, and US speakers.

Meme Guy

Shook (meaning shaken) became prominent in hip-hop starting in the 1990s. Some musicians, such as the New York-based group Mobb Deep, released songs that used shook as a standalone adjective for uncontrollable emotions, as in the 1995 “Shook Ones”: “Son, they shook / Cause ain’t no such thing as halfway crooks.” Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, and 2Pac all used the word in their lyrics since.

Shook went viral when comedian Christine Sydelko posted a video of herself in 2017 saying “I am shooketh” after she felt embarrassed that she was too familiar at a Boston Market restaurant. Why she chose the exact word shooketh is unclear, but since the character she portrays in her YouTube series typically wears a windbreaker, sweatband, and “Don’t Mess With Texas” T-shirt, it would seem that the extra “-eth” is perhaps a stereotype of something someone from the Bible Belt might cite … from the Bible. Shooketh went on as a meme expression for intense emotions like shock or amazement.

i0.kym-cdn.com

Shook remains a staple of memes and tweets everywhere, with both the humorous shooketh and hip-hop’s use of it helping to push the term into more mainstream slang. To get an idea of it, just listen to the 2018 Bruno Mars hit single “Finesse” and hear what happens to girls when Cardi B comes up with her “Big Bronx boogie”: “Got all them girls shook.”