A verbal tap on the shoulder — greeting, attention-getter, or surprise marker that does several conversational jobs at once.
Wesh is what you say when you want someone's attention, when you're surprised, when you're starting a conversation — it's the verbal equivalent of a tap on the shoulder. It works as a greeting, an exclamation, a way to fill space while you think. The word doesn't translate cleanly because it isn't trying to mean one thing; it's trying to do several jobs at once.
It came from Algerian Arabic, specifically from the phrase "wesh rak?" — how are you? — and arrived in France through North African immigrant communities in the 1980s. In the housing projects ringing Paris, young people shortened it, bent it, made it their own. What started as a greeting became a signature of banlieue culture, then spread through French rap in the 1990s, eventually becoming standard currency for French youth everywhere.
By 2024, it jumped the English Channel. British rapper Central Cee used it in a track, TikTok picked it up, and suddenly London teenagers were saying it too. The word's journey — from Algerian Arabic to Parisian suburbs to French mainstream to British streets — maps how migration reshapes language, how the margins eventually rewrite the center. It's proof that the most influential parts of a culture often come from the places that culture tried to keep on the periphery.