You may take it lightly until you visited Twitter and changed your location to Uganda “Osilike” (and shut up), then you will recognize the most trending topics. Definitely, in the trends, you’re going to find an expression or phrase on top of the list. Today, we’re focusing on the “Osilike” phrase and its origin as we have seen the expression all over social media.

“Osilike” is a Luganda word that translates directly to “then stay quiet” and is usually used when advising someone to do something more likely to field their desirable results. Ugandan TV presenter/musician Crysto Panda has also released a song titled “Osilike”, probably to take advantage of the trending tag all over the place.

https://twitter.com/CrystoPanda/status/1483875408894480385

According to the trends, memes that follow each other in sequence usually are either related or answering the previous. An example is how “Omugenzi” trended just before “Osilike” in 2022 just as “Omwaavu” came before “webereremu”. These words directly come as solutions to their predecessors.

From being mere sources of humor, memes have grown to become actual life advice in the making whereby if taken literally can change one’s life. Most people who post memes on social media do it because of the way the facts are a smack in the face and turn out to be funny. This could mean that most of these words we see trending are ideas that so many people relate with and therefore share so widely over a long timeframe.

Returning to our main topic, ” Osilike”, this word has been used in several ways, from utter madness to upright advice as you may see later in the article. The word is being used to tell people how little they have to do to get just about anything they want, for instance, men who want sex are advised to spend money on the girls they desire and just stay quiet. This is how this word has burst out of its boundaries from just being a regular Luganda verb to almost becoming a trademark for several businesses including banks.