My parents considered it to be their greatest achievement that their kids say “cool” instead of “geil” (hot or sometimes horny).
Dag, pash, mole, cobber, drongo.
Rarely hear any of them these days.
The macdonians always used to say “Sick fish” and it meant “Really good”.
I didn’t learn until an embarrassingly late age that you shouldn’t say “jewed them down” or “I got gypped” when discussing prices, etc. Once it dawned on me what I was saying, I felt pretty mortified, but I grew up hearing them as normal words. It was just a thing you say.
Same with me. Didn’t even think of where it came from.
When something was “dry” it meant it was bad. Never heard it again after I finished middle school.
Fo sho, mostly because growing up made me realize I’m never really sho of anything no mo.
XD is pretty rare as an emoticon now.
Also abbreviating you as u, to as 2, for as 4, etc. Probably because we have full keyboards and not numpads anymore.
bbm me
Dope
Beefed it / Biffed it
I still say ‘biffed it’ sometimes.
Ex: “You fucking biffed it hard on that last jump there, bud.”
Dope isn’t a thing anymore? My heart sank a little…
It’s alive as long as dope motherfuckers like you and me keep using it.
I say that shit all the time and teach my kids too. Pretty much has gradually settled into a term of serious admiration for particularly tasty art (of any kind).
Radical. Tubular. Bodacious. Gnarly. Basically anything a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle would have said.
Cowabunga it is, then!
I love surfer slang because it’s rooted in a verbose comprehension of the English language. The hyperbole of it brings me joy lol.
18 year old daughter just uttered “gnarly” tonight during a horror movie.
We were shocked!
“gnarly” still exists as a word for convoluted or fouled.
Gnarly is back thanks to Katseye
God its hard to remember but yes all of those were said completely seriously, not a drip of sarcasm or tongue in cheek. Now it’s hard thinking that anyone would say tubular without being completely ironic
“Tubular” is from surfer lingo right? It makes a lot of sense when you realize they’re comparing whatever cool thing you’re talking about to a wave like this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1mXQaSA3-rE
It only works when you say it with that TV California surfer accent too though, like
Shyeah, duuude, it’s like tohtally tubular! 😎
Calling others gay or disabled as a slur.
I’m old enough that teachers referred to us as the “retarded kids” not to our face at least but when they thought we couldn’t hear them.
By us I meant the learning disabled.
Wanda Sykes did a PSA about this. It was put on YouTube 17 years ago. I don’t know when it first aired.
Now I feel old…
We had a campaign in Canada called “‘That’s so gay’ is so yesterday” when I was in school. A lot of classrooms had stickers or posters with that quote. IDK how well it worked in general but definitely had an effect on me, especially since I was at an age where I didn’t really understand what homosexuality even was, and one of my first exposures to the word was that it’s not okay to use it as an insult.
Also using it for situations of inconvenience. Eg, “The next train is cancelled.” “That’s fuckin gay!”
I grew up in the 90s, theses were used by everyone all the time. I still use these, even though I don’t like to. Though, if any of an excuse, I don’t use them to denigrate those disabled or homosexual.
“Retard” is used for any person or thing that is hard to work with, complex to use. Anything complex that takes up a lot time, not simple to use. My oven clock is “retarded” as it isn’t intuitive when trying to set the time. I am “retarded” for not taking the time to pull out the manual and learn how to set it after the power goes out.
“Gay” is for anything or anyone that is dramatic, causing a situation or problem when there isn’t one. For people who are overly sensitive, who take offense at “sub conscious facial micro aggression” of others.
I grew up beating up the bullies of disabled kids. When I got older, I became a lgtbq advocate and donated time\money to charity that supports them. Am I trying to excuse my behavior by still using these …?..
Sure that’s not just an age thing you and your peers have outgrown?
Both is unfortunately still in use by youths here, but just not once they are grown-up.
Jew got used a lot in my area in a similar way. It’s horrible looking back and it got used in a lot of ways, one of the weirder uses was in football/soccer, where doing a sideways pass to a teammate for an easy goal was called ‘jew-ing it’.
Bread. Yes, the word bread. It was quite popular in northern India. We use to call stupid people bread. Like, “Tu bread hai kya?” (Are you bread?)
This was alternative to the word “chutiya”, which is a curse word, that we could use in front of teachers and elders.
Syke. Or psych. Early 90’s kid slang, had a definition akin to just kidding or fooled you but more mean spirited. Said to mark the previous statement as intended purely to mess with the listener’s mind or psych them out. Similar in spirit to ending a sarcastically spoken sentence with “NOT!” though distinct.
“Yeah man, you can drive my car. Psych! You’re not touching my ride.”
The more I type about it, the less “psych” looks like a valid English word.
Of course it is. Go rewatch a few episodes of “Psych!” to cure yourself.
You know I know that you’re not telling the truth.
Dude, don’t try to psych me out! You and I both know it’s:
🎶I know you know that I′m not telling the truth,
I know you know they just don’t have any proof.
Embrace the deception, learn how to bend
Your worst inhibitions tend to psych you out in the end🎶
🍍
We spelled it “sike”. No clue why.
Supersingular isogeny key exchange (SIKE) is very secure post-quantum replacement for Diffie-Hellman…
SIKE!
Because it started in grade school, and grade school kids were not aware of the word “psych.” So they spelt it how it sounded. Sike or syke, they’re both equally incorrect, but the point is the kids who used them were using them correctly.
The only thing remotely weird about it was when they learned the word “psych” and thought they meant two different things (like they don’t believe “psyching someone out” is a thing, like it does not click for them).
To add to the confusion: For 2 weeks/year I help out the local ballet studio with stage crew. We have this big white backdrop curtain, and colorful lights are pointed directly at the curtain to make dramatic and moody changes to the background during certain dances. When I heard the name of these, I assumed it was the “psyche curtain” and “psyche lights” because that’s how it is pronounced.
Turns out the box is marked “Cyc.” I have to assume that the people that sold the curtain are way less amateur than I am, so I would like to add this third potential spelling.
Cyc is short for cyclorama. A way of lighting a backdrop which kind of wraps around a stage, that wrap around effect which lead to the name.
OMG, I haven’t thought about one of those since I stopped taking ballet. Learned all those French spellings, never thought about how to spell the “Cyc” curtain/scrim, only that we were to stay well clear of it because it was super expensive and can’t be repaired. (Expensive bc huge seamless fabric stretched on a curved frame, and any repair would ruin the seamless illusion.)
I had always assumed it was humorously mis-spelling the word. Like people who would spell it “kool”.
Could be. I just figured since it started in grade school, it wasn’t intentional.
Cause the cool kids didn’t read
This is truer than you might think. A lot of slang developed out of a need to express oneself without having the vernacular (or even desire) to clearly articulate. It leads to innovating interesting (and in some cases more practical) new ways to say something in a way others (typically in your in-group) can understand easily.
I suspect a lot of that crazy Gen Z stuff comes from kids getting into social media well before fully developing their own social skills, so it just started manifesting through terms and phases they picked up from video games and such.
Wow, interesting explanation. It makes a lot of sense
PJ & Duncan earned exclusive rights to that term in perpetuity with their seminal classic “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble”
The more I type about it, the less “psych” looks like a valid English word.
…because the word is ‘psyche’: “I psyched him out.”
I think it’s Greek origin, and it’s like “psychology”.
One’s psyche (2 syllables) is one’s soul/personality/mind. It’s not a verb.
They all come from the Myth of Psyche (also 2 syllables) a princess loved by Cupid and disliked by his mom.
Psyche (mythology) - Wikipedia https://share.google/kjpSB8R9ySQPDwx6k
“Psyche” is a different word to “psych” in English. “Psyche” is a noun, pronounced “sye-kee”; “psych” is a colloquial/casual verb, pronounced “syke”.
I still use most of the hella tight slang I grew up with
I dig your vibe, dog.
Who you calling a dog, dawg?
I’m finna get my homeboys to whoop your ass, you dig homeslice?
Yo Bro, cool your jets.
hella
i picked this one up from living in california for 15 years and it keeps tripping up the people i talk to everywhere else i’ve lived since then.
i don’t even notice that i do it until someone points it out to me. lol
I feel like hella was the west coast version of wicked.
That was hella wicked.
I called something “the bomb” the other day and my mind did a record scratch, like, did I actually say that unironically??
My nephew’s initials are b.o.m.b unintentionally.
He’s the bomb.
Huh.
Retard.
“Everyone’s always asking me: ‘What are you doing, retard?’, but nobody ever asks 'How are you doing, retard?'”
How are you doing retard?
❤️
I hate how that word became pejorative, because it was used correctly. By the way, it’s still used in plumbing. Retard is a verb which means to slow, e.g. retard the flow. When you call a person who is developmentally disabled that, yes it’s rude, but it means their mental process is slow. The word was being used accurately. It’s just not nice to say.
I don’t think “window licker” was ever accurate, but for some reason it’s slightly more socially acceptable to say (or imply, e.g. “I will say this for him, his windows are always clean”).
It doesn’t mean their mental process is slow. It refers to developmental retardation. As if the person’s body is just going to “catch up” one day… Which is why it was a stupid thing to say all along.
There’s a few term of that kind of age which were like that. Medical terms or just plain English words that became labelled “derogatory” because of how they were used. I always felt it showed how poor the vocabulary of some people was. If they only knew the derogatory meaning they’d get offended by it’s use in all situations even if the meaning was innocent.
Or it’s more derogatory sibling, Fucktard.
pivotal comma
I really try not to say this out loud. Im mostly successful. Its deeply imprinted.
I’ve been hearing this a lot more within the last ~14 months.
That was very common when I was growing up. Unfortunately, it has been replaced with variations of autistic, though “anti-woke” people will use both.
Eh, I use it for very stupid people. Obviously devoid of ableist intent.
I feel as though the context matters with this. For the genuinely evil and criminally unintelligent I would use the clinical “Mentally retarded”.
“Retard” and music (low volume) on buses are the controversial hills I’m willing to die on.
Pick better hills.
Maybe later, for now I have petty culturally unpopular positions that I will maintain. They are few but they are mine.
Maybe by you… Unfortunately.
