Friday, June 25, 2010

Friday Flashback: Slang

Slang words are a part of every culture, it’s what makes the languages colorful and gives each region its own unique flavor. But English slang may be the most dynamic and mutable of all.

1940’s

Hep cats- swing music lovers, dancers (male)
Hep kittens- swing music lovers, dancers (female)
Hi-de-ho- hello
Lettuce- money
Threads- clothes
Cast an eyeball- look around
City slicker- dandy from the city

1950’s

Ankle-biter - a child or extremely small person
Bash - great party Heat - police
Horn - telephone
Kookie - nuts, in the nicest possible way
Lighter - a crew cut
Make the scene - to attend an event or activity
Nosebleed - an insult
Paper shaker - cheerleader

1960’s

a gas - fun
bad - awesome
badass - a tough guy
bag - to steal
beat feet or book - leave quickly
cat - a guy
chick - a girl
cool - awesome, nice
crash - to sleep
dig - do you understand?
dude - a dweeb or dork
fag - a cigarette
groovy - awesome
right on! - amen! or I agree!
stoned - high
stoked - excited
the bird - to raise the middle finger
wipe out - to fail spectacularly

1970’s

Skinney-real deal or truth
Can You Dig It-Do you understand?
Psyche-To trick someone. As if to psyche them out.
Crib-home or someone else's house
Dream On-a term used to tell someone they are being unrealistic
In Your Face!(or simply, 'Face!')-I have succeeded in embarrassing or up-staging you
That's Sick!-To describe something odd or unusual.
Cheese Eater
Chill

1980's

411 - information
airhead - a stupid person
BFF - best friends forever
bangin' or bitchin' - cool or impressive
bomb or boss - excellent
couch potato - someone who sits on the sofa watching TV or playing games
crunk - cool or hip
deep shit - really big trouble
dis - disrespect
fine - hot or sexy
glam - glamorous
goth - same as modern usage
grindage - food
happening - hip or current
harsh - cold or hard
head-banger - fan of heavy metal music
later - good-bye
posse - friends
righteous - awesome
schweet - sweet
'sup - what's going on
tard - retard or idiot
veg - to chill out
wannabe - a "want to be" or someone who is not cool

1990’s

As if - means yeah right
Bling bling- nice jewelry.
Bunk- messed up, crazy.
Cha ching- costly
Crunk- hyped up, excited
Dawg- a friend "what's up dawg?"
Down - I'm down with that "sounds good to me "
My bad - your mistake.
Peace out- Bye
Shady- being unfair or not nice.
Sweet- meaning cool "that car is sweet".

2000's

sick = awesome
nasty = awesome
dirty = awesome
legit = legitimate
ridic = ridiculous
fo shizzle = for sure
popo = police
shiznit = shit, as in "this stuff is the shiznit,"
ballin' = playing basketball or being wealthy
Hells Yeah!
So Gay (as in so stupid, dumb)
Gaydar
Muffin Top
Whatever


Even though we have added words every decade, I think it’s fun to see that we still use slang from as far back as 50 years ago.

What? Did you think your generation invented them?
As if.

7 comments:

  1. This is awesome! I love, love, love old slang words. I am totally going to use Lettuce and Horn. I love the ones from the 90's. I think the movie Clueless in itself invented about 1,000 new slang words. I loved that movie. It was practically in another language.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooo, this was awesome! I'm a total word nerd, so I really enjoyed this. Thanks for putting it together! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I didn't realize Goth went back to the 80s!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. wow this was TRE COOL. haha I'M ALL OUT OF LETTUCE!!

    it's so interesting to see all these little changes in our language.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Awesome post!

    For my noir, I've been studying early 60's slang, a lot of which carried over from earlier decades. Much also came from the beatniks. The later 60's had more drug culture slang.

    A lot of people think California teenage girls invented, "like wow," and "like cool," and "like,like, like" everything. But it was really the beatniks who talked that way first, as early as the fities. Fun stuff. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow!

    That was amazing!

    Wonder what this decade will bring...

    ReplyDelete

It helps to know I'm not just talking to myself.