sus
/suhs/adjective · verb
Meaning
Informal slang for describing someone or something that seems suspicious, deceptive, strange, or generally untrustworthy. In gaming and online chat, it is often a quick, joking accusation; as a verb, sus can also mean to figure out or investigate someone or something, although that use is commonly spelled suss.
- 1. Suspicious or suggestive of dishonesty: “That excuse sounds sus.”
- 2. Questionable, strange, or unreliable without necessarily implying serious wrongdoing: “This website looks sus.”
- 3. A brief, often humorous accusation that someone may be hiding something or, in a game such as Among Us, may be an impostor.
- 4. To figure out, understand, or investigate a person or situation, as in “sus out”; this verbal sense also appears as suss or suss out.
Examples
“You changed your story three times, which is pretty sus.”
“The dog staring at the empty corner is sus, but probably harmless.”
“Red was sus all round, so we voted them out before the next emergency meeting.”
“That deal is so sus that I’m reading the contract twice.”
“I sus out the real problem after checking the error log.”
Origin and spread
Sus is a clipped form associated chiefly with suspicious and suspect. The shortened adjective was already in circulation before Among Us, but the exact earliest use is difficult to establish from surviving public records. Among Us, released by Innersloth in 2018, gave the word a powerful new setting: players identify suspected impostors and debate suspicious behavior. The game’s sharp rise through streaming and social play in 2020, when it became Google’s top-trending game, helped carry sus from gaming chat into wider internet and everyday joking use.
How to use it
Sus is casual, deliberately exaggerated, and often humorous, especially in phrases such as “That’s sus.” In Among Us and similar gaming contexts, it can specifically suggest that a player is behaving like an impostor. Outside games, it can describe anything from a dubious online listing to an implausible excuse. It may sound childish or dismissive in a serious conversation, and the verb sense is more naturally written suss or suss out in many varieties of English.
Sources
- 1. Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, “sus”
- 2. Steam, Among Us store page
- 3. Innersloth, “Among Us and Innersloth in 2020”
- 4. TechCrunch, Google’s 2020 search trends
- 5. ComicBook.com, “Among Us is Google’s Number One Trending Video Game of 2020”
- 6. Digital Voices, “Among Us and The Power of Collaboration in the Digital Space”
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