mayo

Typically, mayo is short for mayonnaise, a classic condiment made of oil, vinegar, and egg yolks.

When not, it can also be used as offensive language against white people or a slang term for drugs.

Content warning: the following article deals with content related to illicit drugs and offensive and disparaging language.

It’s not exactly clear where mayonnaise comes from or how it got its name. An early 19th-century traveler to Paris mentions a chicken dish containing mayonnaise but doesn’t give the recipe. It’s one of the earliest attestations we have to the condiment.

Whatever its ultimate origin, mayonnaise is recorded in English as early as 1815 as borrowed from French. The condiment quickly became popular around the world. By 1930, mayonnaise was informally shortened to mayo, and is commonly referred to as such today.

Mayo began being used as a slang for drugs as early as the 1940s, becoming commonplace by the 1990s–particularly in reference to cocaine but also heroin or morphine. The nickname may have been inspired by the white color of the condiment, but it’s also a possible corruption of the name yayo, a Latin American term for cocaine.

Mayo, as slang for drugs, also appears in hip-hop songs from the 1990s. This expression appears to have largely dropped out of use by the early 2000s, however. By at least 2000, mayonnaise–occasionally shortened to mayo–emerged as offensive language against white people, presumably a riff on the condiment’s color.

Calling mayonnaise mayo is very widespread in the English-speaking world.

Occasionally, mayo is still used as slang for cocaine or heroin.

Mayo, when used as a disparaging term for white people, is most common in Black American slang, although its use is not extremely widespread.

Sometimes it’s used as an adjective in conjunction with other words, such as mayo ho, in order to create the perfect, sandwich-ready burn.

More examples of mayo:

“The sales data that the Wall Street Journal relied upon only took egg-based mayo into consideration, while ignoring the explosion in egg-free mayo.”
—Ari Levaux, Shepherd Express, December 2018

This content is not meant to be a formal definition of this term. Rather, it is an informal summary that seeks to provide supplemental information and context important to know or keep in mind about the term’s history, meaning, and usage.