Talahon

What it means

1. 1.

   A young man, usually read as Arab or Turkish, in a specific look: designer tracksuit, man-bag worn across the chest, heavy logo branding, fake or aspirational luxury. Named Youth Word of the Year 2024.

2. 2.

   Unlike most winners of that award, this one is genuinely in teenage mouths — but it is also the most loaded. It carries an assumption of petty criminality, and the German far right adopted it wholesale as an ethnic slur within months of it going viral. Listed here so you recognise it, not so you use it.

Literally: Come here (Arabic).

Examples with translations

• Vor dem Bahnhof standen drei Talahons.

  There were three lads in full trackie-and-manbag uniform outside the station.

  Note: Even neutrally meant, this sentence is making a judgement about ethnicity as much as about clothing.

• Der Talahon-Look ist gerade überall.

  That whole look is everywhere right now.

Where it comes from

From Levantine Arabic تعال هنا taʿāl hōn, 'come here'. It reached German through the 2022 track 'Ta3al Lahon' by the Lebanese-German rapper Hassan, whose refrain became a TikTok sound in 2023–24; the sound attached itself to a visual stereotype and the noun followed.

First attested: 2023