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Wait wut. By the wonderful Brooke Barker.
P.S. Personal pep talks, and what slang do you use?
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I feel seen. Ha
Well, my kids (ages 13, 11, and 8) like to call me “bruh” when they are annoyed or embarrassed by me. I used to remind them that I’m their MOM and not a “bruh” (which is maybe such a “mom” thing to say), but now I just call them BRUH in return, as in “Oh, am I embarrassing you BRUH?” I’m hoping my use of this slang word might make it uncool in our house sooner rather than later, haha!
Saw a pic of the best Mothers Day cake the last other day:
Ma
Mommy
Mama
Mom
Bruh
Haha! My 8 year old son’s friend just asked me if “yoyo” meant crazy. I was like “you are not asking the right person . You need to find someone younger than me … and older than you!”
This makes me think of conversations with my 5 year old. “….That’s not a real word.” “It’s only funny if you know the real way to say it and use that most of the time…” HaHaHaHa! I can be such a pain in the behind lol. That autism piece yesterday reeeeeeeaaaaallllly spoke to me. ♥️
I have no idea what 100% of these song phrases mean. I do have faith that really good ones can become part of official language though. And that isn’t awful 😉😉😉.
i love learning slang from TikTok and trying it on with abandon
Any Earth Day or climate change posts? Would love to see COJ start a dialogue on the very pressing issue of our planet warming…
yes !! please
My son does have his own slang, but so do I. So do most people. We play around with it, and have had fun laughing about it.
I suggest it’s ok to tell a different story about this though, rather than seeing it as evidence of an adult’s irrelevance and obsolescence (which is ageism). Slang is just language evolving, part of the ever ongoing changes of life. Why not enjoy it?
Yes! This specific comic is just for fun, but it’s good to point out that the idea of relevent lingo is relative: in a career-oriented culture, it could just as easily be the language of 40-somethings (the highest earners) that’s considered ‘hip’.
That feeling when you thought it was thurs but coj posts a comic… It’s the freakin’ weekend! (Or is that… not a cool thing to say….)
Zounds, TGIF!
It does make one feel old, but also, there is something kind of awesome and powerful about the fact that something as simple as words can function as a “keep out” sign on the door of the clubhouse. I mean, that’s always been true and it is used to ill effect when it’s work jargon that maintains an “old boys club” or otherwise limits hiring, but also kind of cool that less empowered folks (youth, socioeconomically disadvantaged and/or under represented minority folks) can pull the same trick, of using language to maintain insider/outsider status. Language is powerful! There is something hopeful about that.
Love this observation, Bookster!
Definitely! Currently reading a great book about exactly this type of thing called, “Cultish” The Language of Fanaticism, by an incredible writer, Amanda Montell.
Highly recommend, because it outlines how vulnerable we all are to the power of language in all realms: politics, marketing etc.
Also my first comment on this post was maybe too minimalist but it was in recognition of how true this comic is, and I see it was not posted so maybe something was lost in translation. That’s ok, of course but it was possibly misconstrued?
I think there is a second peak for those that have teenagers in the house. Those folks all of a sudden know slang, pop music and the cool shoe trends.
Yes! My kids are in their late teens and my millennial co-workers are always super interested to find out what’s current :)
I was just scrolling down to say this!! Definitely bi-modal. Unless you are a high school teacher. Then you are always current
Yup, my 16 year old helps me understand what the youths are saying lol
Thank goodness for Urban Dictionary.
My kids use of sus cracks me up. My 20
Year old also feels old when me younger two use the same slang he does so it’s not just us everyone is feeling slang old lol
I’m 35 and work in an elementary school in Seattle, and the slang situation is HILARIOUS. The kids are juuuuust slightly worse/less up to date than I am at slang, because they are picking up and trying out phrases that are both somewhat outdated and that they don’t quite know how to use. My favorite is the second-grade trend of saying “heckin'”, as in, “I’m reading a heckin’ cool book about dragons!” – I think it’s hella, filtered to hecka, and then became heckin? Regardless, the language experimentation delights me daily.
Maybe their parents are doggo language aficionados, lol.
heckin’ amazing.
Haha yes Sophia. My first grader came home dabbing the other day and I was like is early elementary school where all the fads trickle down to and just kind of float around indefinitely?
Well, this is really derpy, as my 12-year-old niece would say.
Commenters, you need to add definitions to your examples of slang! I have no idea what any of these words mean.
Haha, agreed! I had this same thought!
+1!!
I’m in my early 30s, child free, divorced, and a lot of my close friends are in their 20s, some still in college. They joke and call me mom. And then they start breaking out the current slang and I’m just like, “Wait. Is that good? Is it bad? What does that even mean?” My favorite is when they use a word as slang and I pull out the actual dictionary definition and I just get blank stares.
Fun story, I was an ER nurse while the slang “a minute” was being used for any time frame at all. I triaged a guy into my ER who was having “chest pain,” and every time I tried to ask him when the pain started, how long it lasted, etc., the response was “It lasted for ‘a minute.’ It started in a ‘minute.'” And that is exactly what I typed into the triage report, word for word.
I guess I really am “mom.” I will wear my “uncool, old” badge proudly. :)
Eli! I love that you are called mom by your friends. I did study abroad late–I did 4.5 years of university and my last semester was abroad. So I was the “old lady” in a dorm with a bunch of first years. They all called me the “hall mom” and I sort of loved it. : )
lmao that ER story
i also think that for a minute calling someone mom means that you think they’re so cool you wish they were your mom miss honey vibes
Ahahaha! Accurate, but also I feel like the peak needs to skew a little more to the left. I’m in my late 20s and I feel like my knowledge of slang is already on its decline. I sometimes feel like speaking to teens requires learning a completely different language!
Same here! I even had TikTok for a while and I STILL have no idea what my younger brother’s girlfriend is talking about! We’ll be having a normal conversation and suddenly she’ll fire off a word or phrase that may as well be Greek, I never felt so old in my life.
A lot of popular slang is AAVE appropriated by white people, so I tend not to use it. Obviously, that’s not always true, but it’s true enough that I just like to be careful.
Thanks for bringing this up, Emily!
Came here to say this. Most of this is AAVE that we coined/regularly used in normal interactions, that have been appropriated (which then actually makes the word/phrase super corny unbeknownst to the appropriators!) the appropriation is super fast nowadays b/c of social media.
“AAVE”?
Slang and acronyms…I can’t keep up with either. Typing used to be great to be faster than hand writing but now we can’t even type out whole words anymore!
TTFN! ;-)
Michelle, I used to be an editor for a company that had contracts with the US military. Nobody loves acronyms more than they do.
Is it typically American to use all these acronyms, or is it common in all English speaking countries? To me as a foreigner that is it’s own kind of slang. I often have to google them (tbh, nsfw were some recent ones) and sometimes I skip it and just feel left out…. Why not write the full words?
AAVE = African-American Vernacular English
My cursory Wikipedia search suggests that they used acronyms in Ancient Rome. Some acronyms we don’t even realize we’re using after a while, like NASA or UNESCO. It’s an interesting topic.
I would differentiate between acronyms in lieu of phrases as slang (MYOB, GOAT, &c) and AAVE (African American Vernacular English). The latter is a sociolinguistic term that’s gaining wider use among laypeople; that I would liken more to a non-slang acronym like ASL (American Sign Language).
Thank you, Lauren O! My brain was struggling to come up with a way to make that distinction.
Emily, Isn’t all slang appropriated from something or someone? :) Even we teenyboppers appropriated fab groovy far out etc from the Beatles and the British Invasion in the 60s. ;)) It’s not a bad thing. Why do we have to be walking on eggshells in 20020s. Sigh.
Jill, appropriating culture from people who are historically (and currently) exploited is different from white people borrowing from other white people. I’m sorry you feel like you are walking on eggshells because of this. Sounds stressful.
I always say if your knowledge of a slang term comes from NPR or NYT, just don’t use it. It’s not for you anymore.
Hahahaha TOTALLY. I’ve realized that when I learn about a trend from a news piece… it’s already over!
hahaha i remember reading about ‘on fleek’ in the nytimes
I feel this! I’m at the can’t-even-pronounce-the-slang age. Is it chew-gee? Or chee-u-jy? Nothing makes me reach for my old lady spectacles like hearing someone say “sus” or “ship” as a verb or some such nonsense.
I posted a jokey IG photo of myself in a skeleton onesie last fall and got a “love this fit!” from a friend who’s an influencer; it took 10,000,000 years for me to realize she wasn’t saying that, like, my pajamas accentuated my biceps. I want to just curl up in a duffel bag and donate myself to some museum for a history diorama, I can’t slang any more, it’s over.
Wait, what does that mean? What did she say?
NE, I guess it’s “outfit” now?
“Donate myself to a diorama” has to be one of the funniest phrases written as a comment!
Yup!! Outfit is just “fit” now ;)
Wicked! Or is it dope? ded? sus?
Please say a prayer for childfree adults like myself who’re left out entirely.
If you spend enough time on the internet, you will find the slang :)
I am particularly loathed amongst my after school program teens because I like to look up the etymology of their slang right there in front of them and then read the whole thing out loud.
“OOOOOOOO. ‘Bet’ is believed to have originated in ATLANTA. How cool is that?!?!?!?”
Lol, Betsy, this made me laugh for real! I love this 😂
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