sket

Sket is yet another slang term for a promiscuous woman in the UK.

Unrelated is the 2000s Japanese manga series Sket Dance. Sket, in this case, is short for Support, Kindness, Encouragement, and Troubleshoot.

Sket originated in the UK during the early 2000s in the slang of Multicultural London English. Its source is obscure, but it may be related to the Jamaican English skettel, or a woman who dresses in dancehall fashion. When you’re going dancing, you move your body. To get better movement, you wear fewer clothes. And, as double standards go, when women move their bodies and wear less clothing, you get called slut, apparently, or in this case, sket.

Sket is most familiar, and notorious, in the UK. In 2014, Manchester United Football Club player Rio Ferdinand was fined £25,000 and suspended for 3 games after tweeting the word sket.  He had gotten into a Twitter fight with a critic, eventually insulting the user’s mother as sket to his 5.9 million followers.

In 2011, a London-set thriller film, called Sket, followed an interracial girl gang as they dealt drugs, dealt with family, and dealt revenge.

As an insult for “slut,” sket specifically means “dirty” and “trashy,” true of its sister terms like whore. Urban Dictionary entries for the term uses modifiers like scabby and crusty.

Sket may also demean a woman not only for sexual promiscuity but also for being manipulative and contemptible more generally. Both women and men may use the term in this way.

You must be a pure sket going near a boy who has a girlfriend 🤮 no excuses like there’s over a billion people in the world lol find your own boy

— paulina (@paulinaotola) August 15, 2018

As true of some other gender words like bitch, some women have reclaimed sket, using the term positively as a sign of solidarity, camaraderie, or sexual liberation.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY GIRRRRRRL!! @Ellie_may_12 Have an amazing day & get sloshed & I wish I was there with ya!❤️ love you sket pic.twitter.com/nF0Jnsf5tt

— amaris (@amxris_) August 12, 2017

This content is not meant to be a formal definition of this term. Rather, it is an informal summary that seeks to provide supplemental information and context important to know or keep in mind about the term’s history, meaning, and usage.