swole

Swole, meaning "extremely muscular," describes individuals with physiques developed through bodybuilding. Despite its resemblance to "swollen," it originated as a past tense of "swell" in Middle English. In the late 1980s, African American English adopted it regionally to refer to well-defined muscles. Rapper Ice-T popularized the term in 1991, and Tupac Shakur used it as a verb in 1997. Swole has since become a complimentary term on social media for individuals with physiques enhanced by weightlifting.