Where did the term dank come from?

The adjective dank is evidenced in Middle English in the 1300s. Then, as now, dank describes places that are unpleasantly moist and humid, such as cellars and caves.

In the 1980s, dank emerged as slang for something “excellent.” Slang has a way of making negative words positive (e.g., bad, sick, ill, or wicked). In the 1990s, dank especially came to characterize high-quality marijuana, the usage perhaps additionally influenced by the fact that marijuana can be pungent and moist.

Dank meme came about in 2013 on internet message boards like 4chan and Reddit dedicated to making parodies of existing memes and mocking meme culture in general. The use of dank here is ironic, as so-called dank memes are so bad (or downright strange) that they’re somehow good.