'About to' — 'finna', from 'fixing to' — as the AAVE future tense that the internet adopted around 2015 and Merriam-Webster in 2021. The record's entry for the verb, its origin, and the distance between the two, which is most of the story of internet slang.
The record notes 'finna' is from Southern Black English, that it was in the dictionary before it was on TikTok, and that most of TikTok does not know either.
Minor, but the record should note that Finna predates the date most people give it. I have a post from 1990 and I suspect there are earlier ones. Correcting the born field is above my pay grade.
Overheard in a supermarket queue, Apr this year: a parent saying "Finna" to a toddler, entirely straight-faced. The toddler understood. I did not, for a second.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
