Word.ws English Dictionary

thug life

thug life noun: a life in which one has to go through many struggles, like that of poor gangstas.

Noun

thug life (countable and uncountable, plural thug lives)

  1. (ironic, often) A life in which one has to go through many struggles, like that of poor gangstas.
    • I didn’t choose the thug life. It chose me.
    • Too many young Black men have adopted this thug life pose.1996 September 22, Wayne Johnson, “Thug Life – Why This Raised So Much Hell”, in soc.culture.african.american (Usenet)

Forms of thug life

pluralthug lives

Origin of thug life

Popularised by American rapper Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) in 1993.

Questions about thug life

What does thug life mean?
Thug life means a life in which one has to go through many struggles, like that of poor gangstas.
What part of speech is thug life?
Thug life is a noun.
What is the plural of thug life?
The plural of thug life is thug lives.

Words near thug life in the dictionary

  1. Thue-Morse sequences
  2. Thueson
  3. Thuesons
  4. thug
  5. thug it out
  6. thug life
  7. thug lives
  8. thugdom
  9. thugduggery
  10. thugee
  11. thugees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thug life (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.

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