About

ONG is a slang term and abbreviation for On God used in memes that dates back to the early 2000s online. It implies that the speaker is telling the truth, being an abbreviation for "I swear on god." It was first added to Urban Dictionary in 2008, however, it wasn't widely used in online discourse and in memes until 2014 on Twitter. In the early 2020s, it became increasingly prevalent and was also associated with Gen Z internet users (similar to slang such as Fr Fr).

Origin

Google^[1] search interest indicates that the phrase "on god slang" received a peak in searches in March 2005, however, the reasoning behind this interest is unclear. It wasn't until December 18th, 2008, that "On God" was added to Urban Dictionary^[2] by the user GeT'Mo.ChEdDa. Over the course of 14 years, the definition received over 240 likes (shown below).

Spread

Despite being added to UD in 2008, the term wasn't used en masse until early 2014 on Twitter. On December 22nd, 2013, Twitter user oohthatsviv was the first to use the phrase and receive over 500 likes, however, the subject matter of the tweet^[3] is NSFW. It captioned a pornographic image with, "best position >>>>> ON GOD 😩" and earned roughly 2,100 likes and 4,500 retweets over the course of nine years.

In April 2014 and May 2014, the phrase was used in more abundance by large Twitter accounts of that time including miilkkk, GirlsNoteBook and FillWerrell. For instance, on April 14th, 2014, the Twitter^[4] account GirlsNoteBook posted a tweet that captioned a meme with, "on god !' earning over 500 likes in eight years (shown below, left). On May 13th, 2014, Twitter^[5] account FillWerrell used the slang term, earning roughly 2,300 likes in eight years (shown below, right).

Accounts like Twitter's^[6] FilWerrell continued to use the phrase in tweets going into 2015, popularizing the phrase to the point that by 2017, it was being used in tweets that received over 10,000 likes. For instance, on November 25th, 2016, Twitter^[7] user @_boyyoustupid_ posted a tweet that captioned an image of Kermit the Frog running, earning roughly 15,200 likes over the course of six years (shown below).

On God? / ong

The abbreviated form of the slang expression, "ong," was first added to Urban Dictionary^[13] on August 23rd, 2018, by user maizuik, receiving over 2,700 likes in roughly four years. The term was defined as:

ong = on god.
1) can be used to agree to something
-- similar to phrases like “i swear to god”, “i put that on god”

Due to the oversaturation of mainstream pages like WorldStarHipHop using the slang term to caption any image macro, the term started to be used ironically going into 2019. For instance, on November 25th, 2018, Twitter^[8] user IsaacFagington (since deleted) posted an ironic The Annoying Orange meme that had Impact font reading, "Oh? On God?" (shown below, left). On January 30th, 2019, a variant reading, "Oh? On Jah?" in reference to late rapper XXXTentacion was posted to /r/XXXTENTACION^[9] (shown below, right).

From 2019 into the 2020s, "On God" was notably used as the title for many hip-hop songs from artists like Kanye West, ^[10] Juice Wrld ^[11] and Gucci Mane, ^[12] among others.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References