How TLC's No Scrubs Changed Popular Culture

According to Urban Dictionary, "scrub" can mean "A guy who mooches off of everyone else and has nothing going for him in life. Probably still lives with his mama, doesn't have a car, a job, or a plan." Or in other words, the kind of guy TLC laments in their song "No Scrubs." The term

According to Urban Dictionary, "scrub" can mean "A guy who mooches off of everyone else and has nothing going for him in life. Probably still lives with his mama, doesn't have a car, a job, or a plan." Or in other words, the kind of guy TLC laments in their song "No Scrubs." The term was probably in use prior to Burruss. For example, author Patrick O'Brian uses the term in a similar context in his 18th-century seafaring historical fiction novels like Desolation Island. Nothing, though, matches the exponential growth of the word in our modern vernacular after the song was released.

Following the TLC hit "No Scrubs," the word "scrubs" took on many different but also some related meanings, according to SongFacts. Modern use of the word scrub can mean a man without much future, as we've already covered, but it can also mean scrubbing a virus or some other unwanted file off a computer or to cut an expense from a budget. Most often, though, scrub is used in the way that TLC meant it when they sang "A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly, And is also known as a buster, Always talking 'bout what he wants, And just sits on his broke ass." As recently as 2019, the song "No Scrubs" had been streamed more than 300 million times and counting, so that definition seems likely here to stay.

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