And other millennial lingo that’s all the rage
Shook. Salty. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. These and so many more terms may make little to no sense unless you are in the millennial generation.
With each generation there is a shift in the ways situations are described. Since the 1990s there has been a shift from “fly” to “dank” simply to describe something as being cool. While millennials use “lit,” “shook,” and “yeet,” previous generations created their own slang like “as if,” “wicked” and “boss.”
As they have grown, millennials have shifted toward creating their own slang to convey the ways they feel in almost any situation. Though these terms are new, the concept of slang is not.
“I think slang serves as the ultimate form of cultural pluralism,” said Isaih Dale, a graduate student in literature. “Slang can bring cultures together by resisting the patriarch. Slang resists the notion of ‘intellectual discourse’ and instead brings about a more loose way, and perhaps even easier way of speaking. Every generation develops, to a certain extent, their very own slang. As a generation becomes older, they begin to resist the younger generations’ slang.”
These terms may seem strange, especially to those who are older, but this generation feels that slang words are able to relay information in a way that other words simply cannot.
“I use ‘liitty titty’ because it fully emcompasses how good a situation is in ways that other words can’t seem to do,” said UW sophomore Rachel Serrell.
Junior Samme Eisenhauer echoed that sentiment.
“‘Rad,’ ‘high key,’ and ‘retweet’ are words I use a lot. You get your point across more by using slang words rather than adjectives,” Eisenhauer.
Slang has been used for centuries, by virtually every generation of human kind, according to its Encyclopedia Britannica entry. Yet there are variations in slang that come from either generational or cultural differences in people.
For example, a lot of African American slang comes from the days of slavery. As slaves were attempting to learn English from their slave masters, who themselves were not very articulate, the slaves would only be able to understand a few words and interpret meaning from them.
“Since the early 2000s, with the rise of social media, came this huge new jargon of slang,” Dale said. “There’s these rises of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter came the idea ‘What can you say in the least amount of words or time?’ That’s really how slang came about. People would rather be quick, to the point than sit down and have this full on conversation or use these very intellectually heavy words. So slang is just easier to use.”
Though slang has been continually evolving within various cultures and generations, the roots of slang all come from a need to fit in. Even in this new iteration of millennial lingo this pattern persists.
“Slang is the ultimate bringing together of cultures, it’s the first connection really,” said Dale. “When you speak with someone you see their slang, and you try to talk and implement your type of voice within the conversation.”
