Etymology of Catch My Fade

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Maui, calling from Addison, Texas.

Maui?

Well, my real name is Dag Maui, but I go by Maui. It’s easier for everybody involved.

Okay.

Welcome to the show, Maui. How can we help?

Well, I initially moved from Ethiopia to California when I was 12, and after spending a couple years in a small Catholic school, I went to a big public high school.

And I heard this slang term that really caught me off guard, which is catch my fade.

And from the context I got, that kind of means, like, come fight me or let’s get in a fight.

And I kind of forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago I heard you talk about some slang words, and I thought you might enjoy this term.

Catch my fade.

So what’s happening when this term is used?

You’re at school, maybe between classes, and some guys are getting into it?

Well, first I heard somebody say, oh, I caught his fade.

But along, like, in the next few months, like, whenever somebody is pushing or shrubbing or that high-fueled area, they’ll say, catch my fate, and they’ll probably use some explosives as well thrown in.

That’s kind of like we used to say in my area, which is, like, bring it or step two, right?

Okay.

Which are basically challenging them to a fight.

Yeah, basically.

Do you know that one, Greg?

I have heard that one.

Yeah.

It’s fairly widespread.

It’s a little old-fashioned now.

I definitely would date it to the 1990s or the 2000s.

I’ve seen it come up in slang collected in California.

I’m not surprised to find it elsewhere, though.

And it shows up in a few dictionaries.

What’s really interesting to me, though, and you’re going to love this, Maui, is it may have a 100-year-old history.

Wow.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

There’s this old verb meaning to fade, and it dates from, say, the late 1800s, 1890s even.

And I got this from Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

There’s a really nice entry there.

It means to put somebody at a disadvantage.

And it’s usually in these similar contexts.

They say in gambling or boxing or in a street altercation or some kind of verbal argument, if I fade you, it means that I put you down or I diminish you, I punish you, or I beat you.

I conquer you.

And so I would not be surprised to find that if we could dig it out, Catch My Fade has some tenuous connection to this older slang form.

Yeah, it was really interesting because I asked my friends in the neighboring counties, and they were never, my cousins were never in the back.

Orange County, they didn’t hear about it.

And it was only in just Pasadena, which is where I went to high school, that I heard about it.

And here in Texas, I haven’t came across it at all, and that’s quite interesting.

Oh, so you didn’t find it in Texas?

No.

Okay.

Well, again, I didn’t go to high school, and I wasn’t in that environment here, because I came here to go to college, and then I started working.

So I wasn’t with a lot of teenagers that have a whole bunch of hormones running around.

So I might be here, but I…

So Maui, I have a question that I think might help us uncover a little bit of other slang connected to this.

When you were in high school and somebody tricked somebody else or made them look the fool, did you guys ever go faded or moated or anything like that?

No, because the term faded was reserved in high school for when you’re intoxicated.

Okay.

Primarily with marijuana.

Yeah, that’s when somebody—that’s why it was such a hard thing to come, like, to try to figure out, because fated was never associated with fighting in other terms, just in that instant when you say, catch my fated or she caught my fated.

Now, that use of being fated, meaning to be drunk or high, was fairly common, but there were parts of California in particular where—I grew up in Missouri saying psych, but in California they would say moated or they would say fated.

Faded was far less common, but I do have some reports of that.

Well, Maui, thank you for sharing this slang with us.

Super cool, dude.

I appreciate it.

Oh, thank you very much.

Take care.

Thanks.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Good stuff.

Really, really good stuff.

We love these firsthand reports of slang.

Yeah, and it changes.

I wonder if high schoolers today are using Catch My Fade in the same way.

Let us know.

Because it’s been just long enough since he was in high school that it could completely be gone now.

Or are there adults who are holding on to it from their high school years?

Yeah, I don’t think it works in PowerPoints like it does in the hallways next to the gym.

Let’s find out.

I think that’s a special effect in PowerPoint.

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