Rinse It

Martha, Sasha in San Diego wrote to share a little slang with us.

Sasha is a Canadian who, with her fellow, with her man, runs an audio and lighting company.

And one of the terms that she wanted to share with us was the term rinse, R-I-N-S-E.

Apparently, when a DJ plays a great set, you might say, they rinsed it. That is, you’re up there, you’re DJing, the whole crowd is dancing, everybody loves what you’re doing, you rinsed it.

Which I think is great.

And doing a little digging on this term, I found that, as Sasha says, that it probably did come from the United Kingdom and probably from the more modern dance clubs.

I don’t think there’s a lot of history behind this term, although it could have come out of Jamaica.

And it might be related to an older meaning of rinse, to go all out, to party, to have a good time.

And so it’s just an interesting slang word that I was glad she shared with me because I didn’t know it.

Yeah, I like it.

So what’s the it? What got rinsed? Is it the act of performing all the music or playing all the music?

Yeah. You’re set. You’re act. You’re show.

Because you’re a DJ. You’re just not like this guy behind a pane of glass. You’re a performance. It’s everything that you do up there.

And you might also say, we had a rinsing good time at the club last night.

Oh, nice. Nice.

So we rinsed that show, that episode of A Way with Words.

Okay. If you’ve got slang you’d like to share with us, we’d like to see it.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.