Pocket Watching

About

Pocket Watching, sometimes spelled Pocketwatching, is an AAVE slang term used to describe the act of carefully following someone else's personal expenses. "Watching someone's pockets" means monitoring someone's income and expenditure, and is an activity that is generally taken to be annoying or off-putting. Throughout the 2010s, the slang term became more widespread as it was increasingly popularized online.

Origin

The earliest known uses of the phrase "pocket watching" on the internet can be traced back to tweets as early as 2009, with various Twitter users using the term in a negative way.^[1][2][3] The term pocket watching is also used in various rap songs, including a 2010 track by Lil B (seen below, left) in which he says "plus they pocket-watching and they feeling like flodging,"^[4] and a 2012 song by Nas (seen below, right) in which he says, "honey be pocket watching, she got a lot of options / hard to make up her mind deciding which baller to rock with."^[5]

On September 9th, 2013, Urban Dictionary^[6] user DoubleM-bay posted a definition for pocket watching that read, "If somebody is looking on how much money you got."

Spread

On September 1st, 2016, Worldstar Hip Hop's official YouTube^[7] channel put out a music video for the song "Pocket Watching" by Cash Out and Dae Dae, gathering over 4 million views in six years (seen below).

On October 24th, 2015, Twitter^[8] user @RudeBoi79_ posted a photo with a caption that read, "Why You Hating On Me And You Pocket Watching?" (seen below, left). On July 22nd, 2018, Adam22 from the NoJumper podcast posted a tweet^[9] that read, "Stop pocket watching 🛑," gathering over 1,000 likes in five years (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References