suspect

Sus is a shortening of suspicious or suspect. In slang, it has the sense of “questionable” or “shady.”

In England and Wales, sus appears in sus law, a name for a stop-and-search law that allowed the police to arrest suspected persons if they appear in violation of the Vagrancy Act of 1824.

The British shortening dates back to the 1950s, with earlier abbreviations of sus for suspicion in other contexts reaching into the 1930s (and related to suss out). Black and ethnic minority groups felt especially targeted by sus laws in the 1970s–80s and ran a successful campaign called Scrap Sus. The law was indeed scrapped in 1981.

Across the pond, sus is short of suspicious, extended to people’s behavior, beliefs, or other things deemed “shady” or “sketchy” in some way. Perhaps a shortening independent from the British English slang, sus spreads online in Black and internet slang in the early 2000s, entered on Urban Dictionary as early as 2003.

In the UK, expect to encounter sus in the context of historic sus laws, often discussed in terms of racial inequalities in policing.

I need to remind my former @metpoliceuk senior officers that indiscriminate stop & searches without reasonable grounds through the #SusLaw in #OperationSwamp was a key factor behind the #BrixtonRiots. They need to refresh their memory of the #ScarmanReport. #InstitutionalAmnesia pic.twitter.com/WlvenyYn8L

— Leroy Logan MBE (@LeroyLogan999) November 12, 2018

On the internet and in Black slang, sus commonly calls out some behavior, action, person, or thing as questionable or objectionable. In this way, sus has come to mean “bad” more generally.

Sus has spread into more mainstream slang, notably appropriated by Tesla’s Elon Musk in a June 2018 tweet.

Looks so sus when we paint cars red pic.twitter.com/SIO2nInjhJ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 23, 2018

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.