“I was mad clutch!”

“Oh my god, I have such horrible aim… I didn’t make ONE ball in. Sorry we sucked because of me,” I told my friend.

“What are you talking about?? I was mad clutch!” he replied.

…What did he just say? I thought to myself. I had never heard such a term before, and my only knowledge of the word clutch was that it was a verb meaning to grasp onto or to hold.

I took out my handy laptop and went on urbandictionary.com.

“Definition 1: to perform under pressure.. Definition 2: Great, Essential, and Potent rolled into a single word.” I pondered at the thought of what my friend meant.

Throughout my entire childhood, I was exposed to all these slang terms but never got the hang of using them or really knowing what the terms meant, other than the word “mad” replacing the word “very” and things like that. This word, “clutch” was no different to all the other alien terms I have heard when I was in middle and high school. I always surrounded myself with people who didn’t speak in slang, so I learned everything in proper English.

So I asked my other friend today, “What does it mean to be clutch??” and he replied:

” Say there’s a basketball game, and the score is tied and there are 2 seconds left. Some guy scores and wins game. That is ‘clutch.'”

Even now, I still don’t know what the actual meaning is even with my friend’s help, but I guess it depends on where you come from and who you’re exposed to do you learn the meanings behind these words…