Connie Eble writes in UNC-CH Campus Slang 2016 on the word snatched:
looking attractive:
That outfit is snatched
This is the earliest and only record Green's Dictionary of Slang lists as a citation in defining the term.
Twitter shows some variations where snatched refers not to the thing that is attractive, but to the person being captivated by the attractive nature:
[The TV show] stranger things has me snatched
- Twitter User (August 2016)
I'm waiting for Audrey to post some pics of her slaying in New York I'm ready to be SNATCHED
- Twitter User (August 2016)
Still others on Twitter use the term as defined by Eble and Green, to refer to something as being attractive, and others further used the term in ways I couldn't even decipher.
So I'm curious if anyone can piece together an origin for the slang term "snatched" meaning "attractive." I can imagine a couple of possibilities, the first being my hypothesis based on the Twitter specimens.
Originated meaning the attractive entity has snatched me up, to the attractive entity has me snatched, and transferred the term from the object to the subject, as in the attractive entity is snatched.
Simply refers to the desirability of something, that it either was or will potentially be snatched up.
Or perhaps there is some other derivation that hasn't occurred to me at this point.
Could this Twitter User, in referring to an image widely described as snatched, be alluding to another origin of the term?
Y’all see his build? Y’all see the abs? Y’all see the waist snatched from God himself? The Balenciaga? This is a win tonight folks.
This offers a third theory: That the attractive "snatched" entity was taken from some supernatural power. I haven't found evidence for this theory beyond variants of the phrase that happen to fit this form.
Can further investigation shed any light on the origin of this slang term?