The female counterpart to "rude boy": originally a young woman moving in the same 1960s Kingston rude-boy street scene, and later a confident, bold, fashionably-dressed dancehall woman who carries herself with attitude and refuses to be pushed around.
Add your own interpretation of "rude gyal".
Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
See all Regional & Other slang on Slangora.
Browse all slang words starting with R.
Originally a label for a 1960s Kingston street-youth subculture: sharply dressed young men in slim suits, narrow ties, pork-pie hats and dark glasses, associated with sound-system dances, ska and rocksteady, and (in the moral panics of the day) with violence and the burgeoning urban gang scene of post-independence Jamaica. The figure was immortalised in songs like Desmond Dekker's "007 (Shanty Town)" and the Wailers' "Rude Boy". When ska reached Britain via the Windrush generation, the rude-boy aesthetic was adopted and adapted by the UK mod, skinhead and especially the late-1970s two-tone revival (The Specials, Madness, The Beat), becoming a defining look of British working-class youth culture. Today the term is also used loosely and affectionately for any bold or fashion-forward young man.
A charming flirt, ladies' man or playboy — someone (usually male) with a reputation for attracting and pursuing many women. Built from the Patois "gyal" (girl) plus the agent-style suffix "-is" or "-ist", on the same pattern as English nouns like "guitarist". The word originated in Jamaican Patois and crossed into Multicultural London English in the 2010s through dancehall and UK road rap, where it sits alongside "wasteman" and "wifey" as part of the gendered relationship vocabulary. Often self-applied with a wink ("him a real gyalis") and sometimes thrown as an accusation or a warning to friends. The female counterpart "gyalis gyal" exists but is much less common.
The female counterpart to "rude boy": originally a young woman moving in the same 1960s Kingston rude-boy street scene, and later a confident, bold, fashionably-dressed dancehall woman who carries herself with attitude and refuses to be pushed around. The phrase is heavily used in dancehall culture as a term of affirmation and address ("big up all the rude gyal dem"), celebrating female autonomy, sexuality and style — closely related to the "bad gyal" archetype later carried into the global pop mainstream by artists like Rihanna. Used affectionately by partners and friends and assertively by women themselves; rarely pejorative. In UK MLE the spelling "rude gyal" is dominant; some Patois writers prefer "rude girl".
unu rude gyal dem look sharp inna the new music video
No comments yet — say something.
Patois spelling of "dirty", reflecting the typical Caribbean pronunciation where the "r" softens and the final consonant is voiced. Used literally to mean unclean or filthy, but more often as slang for "raw", "hard", "intense" or "impressively grimy" in the same way English speakers might say a beat is "filthy". Common in dancehall and UK garage/grime, where a "dutty bassline" is a heavy, distorted, irresistible one. The word also names a whole family of dances and phrases: "dutty wine" (a popular 2000s dance involving rapid neck and hip rotation, named in Tony Matterhorn's 2006 hit), "dutty whine", "dutty dancing". Tone determines whether the speaker is paying a compliment, describing literal dirt or, sometimes, calling someone disreputable.