General Discussion

Then hip-hop took the word. Tupac had it tattooed onto his body, and Cleveland's Bone Thugs-N-Harmony sent the word into cars and living rooms across the country.

In this conception of the word, Garber writes, thugs "are both victims and agents of injustice, they are both the products and producers of violence, and mayhem, and outrage".

She's also been listening to how people have been using the word in the Baltimore riots.

"It's this very effective way of suggesting that the people who are doing the rioting and who are being called thugs don't actually have a right to their outrage," she says.