Tagalog Slang Guide: 20 Words You'll Hear on TikTok

Scroll through Filipino TikTok for five minutes and you will see the same words over and over — petmalu under a dance clip, sana all on a couple’s anniversary post, lodi shouted at a basketball highlight. They are not in your phrasebook, and Google Translate will confidently give you the wrong answer. Welcome to the fastest-moving layer of the language.

The good news: most modern Tagalog slang runs on two simple engines. Learn those, add a short vocabulary list, and you will decode most of what your cousins and your timeline are saying.

How Tagalog slang actually works

The first engine is syllable reversal — known in Filipino as tadbalik or baliktad (“to flip”). Take a normal word, swap its syllables, and you have slang. Idol becomes lodi. Malupit (“brutal / extraordinary”) becomes petmalu. Power becomes werpa. Even the classic astig comes from reversing the inside of matigas (“tough”). This is not a new trick — it goes back decades in Manila street speech.

The second engine is English fusion. English words get pulled straight into Filipino grammar, sometimes clipped, sometimes glued to Tagalog affixes. “Crush ko siya” means “I have a crush on them.” Chill lang (“take it easy”) is half English, half Filipino, fully natural. Sobrang lit took the Gen-Z English “lit” and wrapped it in the Filipino intensifier sobrang.

A lot of this creativity traces back to swardspeak (also called bekinese) — the playful argot developed by Filipino gay communities, which film critic Nestor Torre named in the 1970s. Syllable reversal and pop-culture remixing are swardspeak signatures, and many “mainstream” slang words — lodi, petmalu, chika — quietly crossed over through show business and talk shows before TikTok amplified them. Worth knowing, worth respecting.

Essential modern Tagalog slang

One table, twenty words. Skim it once, come back when something confuses you on your feed.

Tagalog	Meaning	Notes
astig	Cool, badass	Reversed from tigas (tough). Safe with any peer.
lodi	Idol; someone you admire	Reversed from idol. Use as hype: 'Lodi!'
petmalu	Awesome, extraordinary	Reversed from malupit. Pairs with lodi and werpa.
werpa	Power; you've got this	Reversed from power. Often shouted as a cheer.
solid	Reliable; legit	English loan. Great for a plan, a person, or an outfit.
chika	Gossip, tea, news	From Spanish chica. 'Anong chika?' = 'What's the tea?'
charot	Just kidding	Drop at the end of a sentence to defuse a joke.
sana all	I wish everyone had that	Affectionate envy. Comment under a couple's post.
push mo yan	Go for it; you got this	Pure encouragement. Popularized by Vice Ganda.
ano ba yan	What even is this	Exasperation — playful or annoyed depending on tone.
bes	Bestie, close friend	Shortened from best friend. Also besh or beshie. Peer-only.
beh	Softer friend endearment	Variant of bes. Warmer, slightly feminine-coded.
tropa	Squad, crew of friends	From Spanish tropa. Refers to the group, not one person.
jowa	Boyfriend or girlfriend	Origin debated; gay-lingo heritage often cited. Casual only.
crush	Someone you like	English loan, Filipino-grammared: 'Crush ko siya.'
MU	Mutual understanding	The Filipino talking-stage label. Pronounced 'em-yu.'
chibog	Food; time to eat	'Tara, chibog!' = 'Come on, let's eat!' Peer-casual.
chill lang	Take it easy; no stress	English-Tagalog fusion. Defusing and reassuring.
sobrang lit	Very fun, wild, great	Gen-Z English import, now standard Filipino youth usage.

Slang for friends, reactions, and relationships

For friends, bes is the workhorse — a clipped English “best friend” that lives everywhere from captions to real-life hellos. You’ll also see besh and beshie (same thing, softer). Tropa means your whole crew, not a single person — think “squad.” On reactions, charot is the single most useful word to learn early: stick it on the end of a spicy sentence to signal “kidding!” and you instantly sound like you belong. Sana all is its wholesome twin — pure, affectionate envy, usually dropped under a couple’s post or a friend’s promotion.

For relationships, jowa is your all-purpose word for boyfriend or girlfriend. Its origin is genuinely contested — gay-lingo is the most common claim, but linguists are not unanimous — so do not be surprised if different Filipinos tell you different stories. It is warm, casual, and absolutely not what you put on a wedding invitation.

When to use slang (and when to hard pass)

Slang has a register, and getting the register wrong is how you accidentally sound rude or try-hard. Green light: friends your age, group chats, captions, casual replies. Yellow light: coworkers your age — read the room first. Red light: elders, your partner’s lola, job interviews, formal writing, and anyone significantly older than your parents. With older family members, fall back on standard Filipino and the respect particles po and opo — our guide to common Tagalog greetings covers that register in detail.

Two more quick rules. First, do not invent reversals — baliktad only works on established pairs, so flipping a random word does not make new slang, it just confuses people. Second, generational register is real. Lodi, petmalu, and werpa exploded in 2017 and belong to millennials now. Gen-Z keeps inventing new terms on TikTok (sobrang latina, and whatever lands next month) — those can fade just as fast as they arrive, so treat them as current-but-temporary. And yes, Tagalog has its own profanity and swear words; we are intentionally skipping them here because that is a separate conversation.

Manila is not all of the Philippines

Almost everything above is Manila / Tagalog-belt slang, which dominates national TV and TikTok. Outside Metro Manila, other languages run the show — Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray, and more — each with its own slang layer. “Bisalog” (Bisaya + Tagalog) mixing is increasingly common among younger Filipinos who move between regions. A fun trap: bati in Tagalog means “to make up after a fight,” but in Cebuano it means “ugly.” If you are not sure what’s local, default to standard Filipino. Our explainer on Tagalog vs. Filipino unpacks why that distinction matters.

Pick two or three words from the list above and drop them into your next message to a Filipino friend. Start with astig, charot, or sana all — they are warm, low-risk, and will almost always earn a smile back. Slang is the part of a language you learn by using, not by memorizing, so go ahead and try. Push mo yan.