desacatao

What it means

1. 1.

   Out of control in the admiring sense — a party, a track or a performance going far beyond what was expected. The core dembow compliment of the last decade.

2. 2.

   Of a person, behaving with no restraint at all. Whether that is praise or a warning depends on who is speaking and how much they had to clean up afterwards.

Literally: insubordinate, defiant

Examples with translations

• El teteo tá desacatao.

  This party is absolutely going off.

• Ese muchacho anda desacatao desde que cobró.

  That kid has been completely off the rails since payday.

Where it comes from

From desacatado, 'defiant', from desacato — contempt of authority. The final /d/ drops as it does in every Dominican -ado participle, which is why the written form keeps the -ao. Its reinvention as praise belongs to dembow lyrics of the 2010s.

First attested: 2010s

Other forms

Spellings and variants:

desacatada, desacatado