Word.ws English Dictionary

hood rat

hood rat noun: a person, especially a man or a woman, from an urban neighborhood who overtly exhibits attributes associated with inner city life, especially in both behavior and appearance.

Noun

hood rat (plural hood rats)

  1. (derogatory, slang, African-American Vernacular) A person, especially a man or a woman, from an urban neighborhood who overtly exhibits attributes associated with inner city life, especially in both behavior and appearance.
    • Let's get a couple of hood rats over for the party tonight.
    • It is true. Carmen is an official gold digger. In fact, she is an instructor at the school of gold digging. Hood rats have been clocking her style for years. Wanting to pull the players she pulled, and wishing they had the looks she had.2005, Jr. Aaron Bryant, Cupid Is Stupid, page 19

Forms of hood rat

pluralhood rats

Origin of hood rat

From hood (“neighborhood”) + rat. First use appears c. 1993 in the Philadelphia Tribune.

Questions about hood rat

What does hood rat mean?
Hood rat means a person, especially a man or a woman, from an urban neighborhood who overtly exhibits attributes associated with inner city life, especially in both behavior and appearance.
What part of speech is hood rat?
Hood rat is a noun.
What is the plural of hood rat?
The plural of hood rat is hood rats.

Words near hood rat in the dictionary

  1. Hoocąk
  2. hood
  3. Hood County
  4. hood ornament
  5. hood ornaments
  6. hood rat
  7. hood ratish
  8. hood rats
  9. hood rattish
  10. hood rich
  11. Hood River

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hood rat (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-hood rat.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hood rat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hood_rat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.