You may have noticed a few terms and phrases flood your Twitter feed throughout this year. From O jewa ke eng? to Sco tu pa manaa, the rise of these phrases has taken ‘viral vocabulary’ to a new level on social media.
But now, there’s a new word roaming the Twitter streets: ‘bomboclaat’.
According to the Urban Dictionary, ‘bomboclaat’ is defined as a “common Jamaican expletive” used to express either extreme of excitement or sadness.
As one Twitter user pointed out though, it has nothing to do with being a greeting or asking for one’s experience, like Sco tu pa manaa does.
‘Bomboclaat’ was first used as a meme by Twitter user @rudebwoy_lamz on 3 September 2019 when his tweet appeared with side-by-side images of a character from the CatDog TV series captioned ‘Bomboclaat’.
Bomboclaat pic.twitter.com/UevYs4jOQx
— L A M A R��⚡ (@rudebwoy_lamz) September 3, 2019
While ‘bomboclaat’ has recently become a Twitter phenomenon, tweets that included the word already began circulating on Twitter in January this year. Around this time ‘bomboclaat’ was used by several Twitter users in Jamaica as an expression similar to a curse word.
You know what I call this? G r o w t h https://t.co/cIRCDS3KJY
— honeybun (@ShadyShadae) January 31, 2019
"shut your bomboclaat mouth" skddkdkddkd https://t.co/mXmpw5JgDw
— long jevity (@_Cooliee) January 16, 2019
This is because of how memes and pictures were now added to ‘bomboclaat’, allowing for more users on Twitter to not only engage with these tweets but create their own ‘bomboclaat’ moments for others to engage with them.
And so began the Twitter trend that is gaining traction in a similar way to Sco tu pa manaa.
Globally, France is at the top of ‘bomboclaat’ tweets, contributing 30.98% of all global mentions. The USA follows at 22.41%. Rounding up the top six countries are Nigeria (17.72%), Brazil (7.94%), Spain (4.53%) and South Africa (4.51%).
While just under half of all global tweets mentioning ‘bomboclaat’ were in English, two other languages were engaged with ‘bomboclaat’ – French and Portuguese, showing how regardless of where you are in the world, or what language you speak, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Or in this case, ‘bomboclaat’ is worth a thousand memes. The addition of memes and pictures to the expression has found a way to go beyond the borders of Jamaica, and have different countries share their own versions of ‘bomboclaat’
The top ‘bomboclaat’ tweet in French, with a social reach of 257,000 people, poked fun at the differences between Twitter’s night and white mode.
quand t'es habitué d'avoir le twitter en mode nuit et que ton pote te montre un tweet sur son téléphone twitter mode blanc https://t.co/5HMUrgq2ba
— ALGÉRIEN ✌ ☪ (@so_mkb) October 29, 2019
O que significa a expressão "Bomboclaat", que está bombando nesta ilustríssima rede social chamada Twitter: https://t.co/PzEjyhBwn4 pic.twitter.com/VJxUJZREZs
— CAPRICHO (@CAPRICHO) October 17, 2019
Send me an invoice. https://t.co/rIFFua9hNt
— Insta: Karabo.Mokgoko �� (@Karabo_Mokgoko) October 19, 2019
Against the rest of the world, South Africans have only been mentioning ‘bomboclaat’ in their tweets 4,922 times during October. The more popular tweet, O jewa ke eng, still remains to trend as South Africans have mentioned the tweet 6,860 times.
Trending themes in South Africa related to ‘bomboclaat’ have included ‘women’ ‘Cape Town’ and former President Jacob ‘Zuma’.
These themes have emerged considering current affairs in South Africa, particularly gender-based violence.
When you're a woman in South Africa �� https://t.co/gb2IRgzjVf
— Abuti' Salvadorè ���� (@ThiddoD) October 9, 2019
‘Bomboclaat’ may be an expression used in humorous ways around the world, but South Africans are using it to still bring light to the social issues that South Africa faces.
‘Bomboclaat’ may not be a Sco tu pa manaa or O jewa ke eng but it certainly has dominated Twitter in October and has the potential to still do so right until the end of the year.
Insights provided by Meltwater.
