すげー (sugē)

What it means

1. 1.

   Wow; amazing. The flattened, drawled form of すごい, and markedly rougher — it reads as male and casual, though young women use it too.

   Not a word to use with a client or a teacher. The full すごい is neutral; すげー is not.

Examples with translations

• すげー、こんなの初めて見た。

  Wow — I've never seen anything like it.

• すげー人だな、ここ。

  It's absolutely heaving here.

Where it comes from

An example of a general casual-speech rule: the adjective ending -ai or -oi collapses to a long -ē. すごい → すげー, うるさい → うるせー, やばい → やべー. Learning the rule unlocks a whole register at once.

Other forms

Romanised as:

sugē

Spellings and variants:

すごい, すげぇ, すっげー