BookTok and romance glossary
The ick is the sudden, sometimes permanent loss of attraction you feel when someone you liked does something small: the way they run for a bus, a line that tries too hard, a habit that should not matter. It is dating slang made famous by Love Island in 2017, and romance readers use it for a love interest who stops working for them.
Definition
“The ick” is a sudden feeling of cringe or mild disgust toward a partner or crush that replaces attraction, usually set off by a trivial behaviour rather than a real incompatibility. You “get the ick” or someone “gives you the ick”, and each trigger is “an ick”. The first documented use in this sense is a 1998 episode of Ally McBeal; Sex and the City named a 2003 episode “The Ick Factor”; Love Island contestant Olivia Attwood made it a catchphrase in 2017, and by 2020 catching the ick was everyday TikTok vocabulary.
By the Prelulu editorial team · Updated
The phrase was used on Ally McBeal in 1998 and in the Sex and the City episode “The Ick Factor” in 2003, but it stayed niche until Olivia Attwood used it on Love Island in 2017. Three years later “I got the ick” had become a TikTok genre of its own, with people listing the tiny things that ended a crush.
Icks are trivial on purpose. Lists collected by The Guardian include not using a pillowcase, walking angrily in flip-flops, letting your legs dangle from a barstool and red sauce left at the corners of your mouth after spaghetti. The small size of the trigger, next to the size of the reaction, is what makes the word funny.
“He clapped when the plane landed and I got the ick.” “Please don’t do the voice, it gives me the ick.” “My icks are mostly about texting.” As a noun with “the”, it is the feeling; as “an ick”, it is the thing that caused it.
Readers say a love interest “gave me the ick” when a moment meant to be charming reads as a performance: announcing his own good deed, a pet name that lands wrong, a grand gesture staged for an audience. Heroes readers stay attached to tend to care without asking for credit.
Ally McBeal 1998, Sex and the City 2003, Love Island 2017, TikTok 2020, trigger examples, Becky Spelman
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FAQ
It means something a person did suddenly made them unattractive to you. “That gives me the ick” is said about a small, specific behaviour, often half as a joke, and it is not a judgement of the person’s character.
No. A red flag is a real warning about character or safety. The ick is a gut-level cringe with no logic behind it — you can get the ick from a perfectly nice person over something that objectively doesn't matter.
Nobody has a settled answer. The psychologist Becky Spelman told The Independent it may be the unconscious mind reacting to fundamental incompatibilities. Others read it as the moment an idealised picture of a crush meets an ordinary, real habit.
Often, if the trigger really is trivial. Naming it with humour, giving it time and noticing what you still like usually takes the sting out. If every ick points at the same deeper mismatch, that pattern is worth taking seriously rather than laughing off.
The closest everyday words are a turn-off or the cringe. “The ick” is more specific: it describes attraction that was there and switched off suddenly, which a general turn-off does not have to.
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