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Phat
Professor David Crystal
Now, this is a difficult one for speech, 'phat', not 'fat'. You
can usually tell the difference because 'fat' is for animates:
people and animals and things, people are 'fat', animals
are 'fat'. 'Phat' is used with things or general states of
affairs, people say, 'You know, that's a phat beat!' or 'It's
very phat down by the river!'
Well, it sounds like a modern usage, doesn't it? It means,
excellent, great, cool… you know, it's phat down by the
river, it's lovely to be down by the river.
As a word, it's been around since the early 1990s. It's from
hip-hop slang. It originally meant sexiness, real sexiness in
a woman. Although, it had all sorts of etymologies, I
wouldn't believe them all - I mean, one was, 'pretty, hot
and tempting', p-h-a-t, and there are some ruder
etymologies as well, let me tell you.
You'll still encounter it, but the homophony, the fact that the two words
sound the same - phat and fat - has made it ambiguous. I don't think it
ever really caught on. I do hear the word around a lot in 2006, but I think
it's on the way out. It's not phat, to say phat, anymore!
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