The slang of the 1920s has proved remarkably durable. There may not be any honest-to-goodness flappers still with us, but the word “copacetic” is still in use. So, too, slang from the ’40s (killer-diller), ’50s (cool), ’60s (groovy), ’70s (cool), ’80s (rad), and ’90s (chillin’). Warning: Using any of those words will date you with Pygmalion precision.
But what of the slang of the 2020s? A distinct new patois has emerged, even though many of us have never heard it. The new cant is often a silent slang, one that has evolved to function within the limits of thumb dexterity. This is remarkable, as slang has traditionally been a spoken-word phenomenon. How did it happen?
Linguists make the case that slang is often a sort of code. For enslaved Africans in the New World, the vocabulary that would come to be called “jive” was developed “to carry on clandestine conversations.” The language could be spoken in front of their masters.
One of the first compilations of slang was John Camden Hotten’s 1858 Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal. Hotten described slang as “the language of street humour, of fast, high, and low life.” And in particular slang, or at least that subcategory of slang called “cant,” has long been the “language of secrecy.”
Hotten devotes a chapter to an account of “The Rhyming Slang” common among fast-talking sidewalk salesmen, particularly in the Cockney Seven Dials neighborhood of London. The language is contrived by replacing a given word with a totally unrelated word that rhymes with the original. Thus, in the Cockney rhyming slang, one might talk about the “missus” as the “cows and kisses”; a cup of rum is a “finger and thumb”; the nose is “I suppose.” Cockney rhyming slang gives Guy Ritchie movies their East End flavor. Given that it is nearly incomprehensible to all but the initiated, Ritchie has gone so far — for example, in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels — as to subtitle the patter.
The slang of our moment is also influenced by relentless rhyming — rap. But, rap aside, there is something quite new in the parlez-vous of kids these days. It isn’t a cant developed through speaking. It is a slang that has come into use through writing — that is, writing on a smartphone.
We’ve all noticed that teenagers prefer texting to talking. Two high schoolers sitting in the same room are more likely to be sending messages back and forth than to be having a spoken conversation (and here I will resist the urge to write “as God intended”).
In text conversations, speed is of the essence. And so, it should come as no surprise that the slang sent between iPhones is abbreviated — thumb-friendly, one might say. Here are some of the key slang terms of Generation Text.
Cap: Not true.
Bet: Sounds good.
Lit: good, fun, exciting.
Sick: super extra cool.
Flex: an impressive accomplishment.
Sus: suspicious, creepy, weird.
Pop out: Go out on the town; come out to party.
Gucci: All good; no worries.
Unless one is a native texter, it’s probably best to avoid “Gucci,” as it has a tricky usage. I am reliably informed that, though Gucci means “good,” one would never use it in a sentence, such as: “This salad is Gucci.”
I believe, however, that it is correct to praise a salad by declaring it to be “sick,” which is not to be confused with what happens if one leaves the Caesar dressing in the trunk of the car for a few hours during the summer before eating the salad.
I hope you have found this excursion into modern slang lit, if not flex.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
