Lexicography is so slept on 😴, we are drowning in SLOP 🌊, very demure, very mindful 🎀

Sep 29, 2024

Welcome to the latest instalment of English in Progress, the newsletter that keeps you updated on the English language. Appears in your inbox whenever I have time.

My name is Heddwen Newton, I’m an English teacher and translator. I love discovering all the ways English is spoken, the ways in which it is used by different generations and by people from all over the world.

Gen Z/alpha slang

Slang used by mostly Gen Z (born 1996 to 2010, more or less) and sometimes Gen Alpha (born 2010 to 2024). Click on the word to see where I got it from.

Diddy party - this one is doing the rounds at American schools, apparently. It refers to either a homosexual party or a “sexual assault party”, and was inspired by allegations that rapper P Diddy has been drugging and sexually assaulting men. I get the impression it is one of those words that teenagers use to seem rebellious. (On Urban Dictionary since 2024)

fit check – a video where a person describes their outfit. (On Urban Dictionary with this definition since 2019)

Skibidi toilet - I’ve talked about this Gen Alpha phrase before—it comes from videos of a human head sticking out of a toilet. (Yes, really.) Back then, it didn’t mean anything, and I keep waiting for it to develop some kind of consistent meaning. But nope, it’s still nonsense. As the mum of a 7.5-year-old: he just... says it sometimes. (On Urban Dictionary since 2023)

sleep on – to underestimate. “The vanilla frosty at Wendy’s is so slept on.” (On Urban Dictionary with this definition since 2017)

SMH - online abbreviation for “shaking my head” (On Urban Dictionary since 2004)

YNs - abbreviation for “young n*ggas”. It’s been around for a while, but is currently becoming popular on TikTok, and understandably getting some backlash (On Urban Dictionary since 2012)

Gen Z’s language might seem incomprehensible, but slang has always sounded that way. This article discusses some Victorian era slang, including the excellent “Podsnappery” - the belief that everything you do is right, while everything everyone else does is wrong. The Conversation, Scotland

Neologisms

My admittedly subjective criterion for words to make this list is that they seemed new and interesting to me. Click on the word for my source. Big thanks to the Words of the Week segment at the end of the podcast Because Language, and the Cambridge New Words Blog.

cloudwashing - the act of marketing an old computer product or service as cloud-based when it is not, or mostly not, to take advantage of the popularity of cloud computing and make more money from the product or service

conscious unbossing - Gen Z’s rejection of middle-management roles, favouring personal growth and independent career paths over managing others.

Deplorean - nickname for Elon Musk’s Cybertruck, also known as a Wankpanzer

fauxductivity - pretending to be busy and productive at work

precrastination - when a person does a task as soon as they can, so they don’t have to think about it any more – often before it needs to be completed

sanewashing - the act of packaging radical and outrageous statements in a way that makes them seem normal, specifically: making Donald Trump sound more coherent and normal

skiplagging - a way to save money that involves booking a flight with a stopover but deliberately not getting back on the plane for the final part of the journey

surveillance pricing - pricing products and services that incorporate data about consumers’ characteristics and behaviour. Other terms are dynamic pricing and differential pricing, but, as Because Language’s host Daniel Midgley puts it “I like surveillance pricing because it sounds more sinister”.

underconsumptioncore - the aesthetic of reducing product consumption and leading a low-waste life

Language and society

According to the writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit, US media are failing to cover Donald Trump properly. “His incapacity to be coherent is pretty much hidden from the public, unless they’re listening directly or reading alternative media,” she says. Prospect Magazine, UK

The phrase "I mean" has become more popular lately. It used to be used mainly to explain or fix something you just said, but now people often use it to show attitude, sarcasm, or make a point. Psychology Today, USA

To test for potential prejudice, researchers fed several large language models short sentences in both AAE (African American English) and standardized American English. Then they asked: How would you describe someone who says this? The results were consistent; all models generated overwhelmingly negative stereotypes when describing speakers of AAE. uchicago news, USA

Words around the world

In this section, I highlight some words and terms from the richness of the English-speaking world that came to my attention in the past weeks. Click on the word to see where I got it from.

clever - UK English for “intelligent”. In the USA, clever doesn’t necessarily refer to someone with a high IQ, but to someone who can solve a puzzle or a mystery or can trick you into doing something you don’t want to

nain - north Welsh English for “grandma”. In the north of Wales, even when speaking English, people often refer to their grandparents as “nain and taid”, in the south it’s “mamgu and tadcu”.

nosh - British English for a full meal, whereas in America it usually refers to a snack. Originally Yiddish, from the German naschen

PLT - pronounced pee-el-tee, astronaut English for “pilot”

scoubidou - British English for a knotting craft with plastic strips, often used by teenagers to make lanyards. Known to Americans as “boondoggle” or “gimp”

shiver me timbers - pirate speak for “I am so surprised, it is like the wind just blew my ship to smithereens”

tarnation - American English for “eternal damnation” (though most Americans don’t know that). Contrary to popular belief, Loonie Toons character Yosemite Sam did not actually say this word very often. (An example of the Mandela effect; just like Bugs Bunny never said nimrod)

An artificial intelligence project staffed by dozens of unpaid volunteers is aiming to create what it says will be the Australia’s first open-source large language model (LLM) built with Australian English and local culture in mind. The project hopes that using many volunteers “won’t land us in trouble,” and also aims to be very transparent in what they are doing. The transparency is being implemented in this article; it all comes across as slightly hapless, but there is probably an equal amount of hap going on behind the scenes at OpenAI and Microsoft. Honestly, I think it is refreshing. Information age, Australia

And finally…

And finally, a funny video or stupid joke that I found on social media.

The video below is my personal favourite from all the “older people doing GenZ slang to talk about their place of work” videos that have been making the rounds recently. I have collected many more here.

The number of mistakes in this newsletter is directly proportionate to the number of times my four-year-old woke me up last night. If you want to give me any feedback (always much appreciated!), you can use the comment button below, or hit reply.

I used very limited AI to create this newsletter, just to help me find the right phrasing once or twice. All articles were chosen, read and summarised by a human being, namely me :-)

The comic was made using an out-of-copyright book illustration that I found on Flickr.

Special thanks to my nephew Q who keeps me updated on Gen Z slang.