By Mr. Newman
One of my favorite things is hearing new student slang. I’ve got a digital “sticky” note on my computer where I keep a list of words and phrases that have popped out of students’ mouths over the past few years.
So, I’m starting a column I’m calling, “Mr. Newman Learns Some Lingo.” When I hear something that makes my ears perk up, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned. My newest find is below.
But first, some context. A few years back a student, before class, was showing some classmates a picture of her prom date. “He’s such a nug,” one of them said. I asked what they meant by “nug.” The student smiled and said, “It’s just, like, a cutey…you know, a nug,” It did seem like the exact right term for someone that you just want to grab on both sides of the face and say, “Aren’t you just adorable?”
That’s when I opened a new sticky note and started the list. At the top: “Nug – a cutey.”
Other words I’ve recorded: “Mid” (mediocre); “Fax” (true); “Cap” (B.S.); “Washed” (done). When my students see the list of words up on the screen, they tend to be fascinated by my fascination with their language. Sometimes they even learn a word they hadn’t heard before.
They’ll also argue about whether some of the words are even a thing. The other day, Julian Farris, in my “What If?” class, told me about the term “Himothy.” Half the class had no idea what he was talking about. They seemed more familiar with the variation, “Him.” As in what you might say to someone who just scored a goal: “You’re him.” Or if you just scored the goal, you might thump your chest and say “I’m him.”
A lot of slang seems to be different ways to give yourself or someone else props (BTDubs, I’m not sure if “props” is used anymore, or its superlative “mad props,” or BTDubs for that matter). Last semester I learned about “drip” (or good style) and “rizz” (having game (slang on slang, baby!). I asked for an example, and someone said, “My rizz is unspoken.”
On the internet, I found an article on “How We Said Cool Through the Decades.” A selection: Bee’s Knees, Swell, Gas, Neato, Far out, Gnarly, Awesome, Phat, Hot, Lit. The fact that so many of those earlier versions sound corny should signal the impending doom of the more recent ones. To fuse Robert Frost with Paris Hilton: “Nothing hot can stay.”
I remember when I was in high school, there was a short period of time when everyone was using the word “fresh” to describe something that was cool. It came from Kool & The Gang’s 1984 hit song “Fresh” which celebrated a “girl who’s come to town/…/fresh as a summer breeze/She’ll take you by surprise.” The surprise element was key. The song championed newness. Appropriately, the word itself fizzled out at my school, and for the rest of my life, I’ve mainly associated “fresh” with produce and deodorant. My loss.
I read part of a book called “Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.” It takes fussy grammarians to task, emphasizing the wondrous flexibility of our ever-evolving language…especially spoken language. It makes the point that the internet, texting, etc. has brought the nimbleness of spoken language into the written realm, and made it so that youthful slang can spread more quickly from one group to another.
Like much of what appears on the internet, slang is trendy, of course, and tends to dissipate from young people’s vocabulary when new words bubble up in the linguistic cauldron, or adults start using it (or writing about it). In that way, “washed” can get washed. It probably already is.
To that point, when I shared a draft of this with my advisory, Ansley Stibbs said “Rizz is gonna be gone in the next three days. I’m already tired of it.”
My newest find:
THE SLANG: “Eats”
THE STORY: I was approaching some students in the hallway and one of them said my “fit” was looking good. I asked what they meant, and they indicated that my outfit was put together. (FYI, I was wearing cords, a V-neck sweater over a button-down shirt, and brown shoes. It was not exactly Met-Gala worthy, so I appreciated the compliment.) Then another student added that “my outfit eats,” and when I looked puzzled, they explained that I’d “left no crumbs.” Slang proves the power of metaphor. What better way to describe someone getting the job done (with fashion, basketball, whatever) than by comparing it to consuming something completely. When 6th century Scandinavian warrior Beowulf (a man who knew who to boast) saved the Danes by killing the monster Grendel, one can imagine them pointing to him and saying, “Dude, you ate.”
THE “RESEARCH”: Slang.net says “ate that” means dominated. The site suggests that the term may have originated in Queens in the mid 2000s, and is popular on Twitter and TikTok. Related slang: Slay, get buckets, awesomesauce. Ansley said I should include “serve,” as in “you brought it.”
As always, your usage may vary.
