Rizz

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Slang for the charm or skill a person uses to attract a romantic partner or win someone's interest
2. Informal term for a person's knack for flirting and drawing others toward them in a romantic way
3. Playful slang describing the appeal and smooth social confidence that makes someone seem romantically attractive

Etymology: Kai Cenat, an American Twitch streamer and YouTuber born in 2001, is usually credited with coining "rizz" around May 2021, either alone or with a close friend. It spread through TikTok in 2022, and by 2023 it had become familiar enough that Oxford University Press named it its Word of the Year. The popular belief that it is short for "charisma" is wrong: Cenat has said as much, though the word's sound may have been shaped by that association. The term is also sometimes traced to the British sitcom Red Dwarf, whose eighth series episode "Cassandra," broadcast on 11 March 1999, has the character Arnold Rimmer use the phrase "giving it rizz" in the sense of having sex. That usage matches the modern meaning closely, but it does not seem to have started the wider word.

Synonyms: charm, charisma, allure, appeal