These days, it feels like there's a new slang term that becomes popular every single week. And even though I'm in my early twenties, I still get quite confused by some of them.
Over on Reddit, people are sharing the slang terms that everyone uses, but they still don't understand. The responses are both hilarious and surprisingly educational for anyone struggling to keep up with modern internet slang:
1. "We've got grandkids. 6, 7. I've googled it and I still don't really understand. I'm not old old, only 58."
"How old will you be in nine years?"
"It means nothing, it's like a joke with no punchline, but it's funny to tell because you're left hanging for the punchline."
2. "Chat..my 16 year old will not stop saying it and it's super annoying and doesn't make sense to me at all."
"It's from streaming culture. The live streamers often address their viewers who commented on live chat rooms as chat. And it has then evolved to casual vernacular, which has about the same meaning as guys/fella/folks/peeps/y'all."
3. "I was working with a younger nurse last week and when she was giving me report about a patient she said, 'It's giving psych.' This new generation of nurses is something else."
"I work in mental health and once was so exhausted from working all-night shifts that I wrote in a report that a conversation with a client was 'giving psychosis.' I realized how dumb and unprofessional it was, and vowed to never do it again."
4. "Mogging."
"Looking attractive and showing off, usually making someone or something else look inferior."
5. "POV when it definitely is not POV."
"It’s kinda just replaced 'that moment when'."
"This has become one of my biggest pet peeves."
6. "ONG. For the longest time, I just thought people were making typos and meant 'OMG.' And that is ingrained into my brain, so 'ONG' just looks moronic. Worst abbreviation of all time."
"It's 'On God.' Similar to saying 'I swear to God' or 'For real,' as in, I'm telling the truth."
7. "Mid. It usually sounds derogatory, but recently have heard folks use 'mid' in a more neutral way that in context seems more like 'could be better, but not bad either.'"
"It's supposed to mean average, not bad. Like very run-of-the-mill, forgettable, dime-a-dozen."
8. "Cooked. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I feel like I've heard it in both contexts."
"If you're doing the cooking, then you are producing something of high quality.
If you are cooked, then you're fucked. Doomed."
9. "'Rizz' still sounds like something you'd spray on a stain before putting clothes in the wash."
"It's short for charisma."
"I can't believe I didn't figure this out on my own."
10. "Drip."
"To be very conspicuously fashionable.
Early 2000s hip hop culture used 'sauce' or 'saucy' to mean stylish, so someone who is showing that to the extreme would be 'dripping with sauce.' Eventually that got shortened to 'drip'."
11. "Based."
"It is directly from Lil' B, who also goes/went by the moniker 'The Based God.' He coined it as a phrase to describe his outlook on life, which was to just do whatever your thing was and to not care what others think of it (he was doing all sorts of atypical stuff for a rapper of the era and they would call him weird, wack, or gay for it). This kind of evolved into just generically calling something good but it's meant to kind of have a 'that rules, fuck the haters' kind of context.
He wasn’t a super known rapper in the mainstream but 4chan liked him for being such a silly troll (this was pre-2016 4chan), and it kinda got picked up from there, and then like so much other internet content, it spread to where it is now used a lot by people that have no idea where it came from."
12. "I think I get what they think it means, but Gen Z kids use 'aura' wrong and it bothers me."
"For some reason the phrase 'aura farming' has always struck me as 'trying too hard' rather than 'effortlessly cool,' which I am pretty sure is the intended meaning."
"Aura farming is when you actually look cool, if it is said like 'bro tryna aura farm 💀' then it is trying too hard."
13. "It's not used much anymore, but for decades I heard 'Fuckin' A,' meaning an emphatic yes, but I couldn't make sense of it. The A by itself could have meant a perfect grade or the highest quality, but that didn't translate to 'yes.'"
14. "Snowflake. It used to mean someone who thinks they are one of a kind. Ya know, because every snowflake is one of a kind. Now it means someone who is easily offended."
15. "And Bob's your uncle."
"It's nepotism. It means you don't have to work hard because Robert Cecil's yer uncle."
"And…Robert's your mother's brother! Sometimes used in England. I like that version."
16. "No cap."
"'Capping' is old school for one-upping and even implies you are exaggerating/lying."
What's a slang term that everyone uses but you still don't get? Let us know in the comments, or use the form below to remain anonymous!
Comments