I didn't learn until an embarrassingly late age that you shouldn't say "jewed them down" or "I got gypped" when discussing prices, etc. Once it dawned on me what I was saying, I felt pretty mortified, but I grew up hearing them as normal words. It was just a thing you say.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Same with me. Didn't even think of where it came from.
Fo sho, mostly because growing up made me realize I'm never really sho of anything no mo.
When something was "dry" it meant it was bad. Never heard it again after I finished middle school.
Radical. Tubular. Bodacious. Gnarly. Basically anything a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle would have said.
Cowabunga it is, then!
I love surfer slang because it's rooted in a verbose comprehension of the English language. The hyperbole of it brings me joy lol.
18 year old daughter just uttered "gnarly" tonight during a horror movie.
We were shocked!
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Dag, pash, mole, cobber, drongo.
Rarely hear any of them these days.
XD is pretty rare as an emoticon now.
Also abbreviating you as u, to as 2, for as 4, etc. Probably because we have full keyboards and not numpads anymore.
I still use most of the hella tight slang I grew up with
I dig your vibe, dog.
Who you calling a dog, dawg?
I'm finna get my homeboys to whoop your ass, you dig homeslice?
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Retard.
I really try not to say this out loud. Im mostly successful. Its deeply imprinted.
I hate how that word became pejorative, because it was used correctly. By the way, it's still used in plumbing. Retard is a verb which means to slow, e.g. retard the flow. When you call a person who is developmentally disabled that, yes it's rude, but it means their mental process is slow. The word was being used accurately. It's just not nice to say.
I don't think "window licker" was ever accurate, but for some reason it's slightly more socially acceptable to say (or imply, e.g. "I will say this for him, his windows are always clean").
It doesn't mean their mental process is slow. It refers to developmental retardation. As if the person's body is just going to "catch up" one day... Which is why it was a stupid thing to say all along.
There's a few term of that kind of age which were like that. Medical terms or just plain English words that became labelled "derogatory" because of how they were used. I always felt it showed how poor the vocabulary of some people was. If they only knew the derogatory meaning they'd get offended by it's use in all situations even if the meaning was innocent.
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Calling others gay or disabled as a slur.
Also using it for situations of inconvenience. Eg, "The next train is cancelled." "That's fuckin gay!"
I'm old enough that teachers referred to us as the "retarded kids" not to our face at least but when they thought we couldn't hear them.
By us I meant the learning disabled.
Wanda Sykes did a PSA about this. It was put on YouTube 17 years ago. I don't know when it first aired.
Now I feel old...
We had a campaign in Canada called "'That's so gay' is so yesterday" when I was in school. A lot of classrooms had stickers or posters with that quote. IDK how well it worked in general but definitely had an effect on me, especially since I was at an age where I didn't really understand what homosexuality even was, and one of my first exposures to the word was that it's not okay to use it as an insult.
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My parents considered it to be their greatest achievement that their kids say "cool" instead of "geil" (hot or sometimes horny).
Syke. Or psych. Early 90's kid slang, had a definition akin to just kidding or fooled you but more mean spirited. Said to mark the previous statement as intended purely to mess with the listener's mind or psych them out. Similar in spirit to ending a sarcastically spoken sentence with "NOT!" though distinct.
"Yeah man, you can drive my car. Psych! You're not touching my ride."
The more I type about it, the less "psych" looks like a valid English word.
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The macdonians always used to say "Sick fish" and it meant "Really good".
Dope
Beefed it / Biffed it
I still say 'biffed it' sometimes.
Ex: "You fucking biffed it hard on that last jump there, bud."
Dope isnβt a thing anymore? My heart sank a littleβ¦
It's alive as long as dope motherfuckers like you and me keep using it.
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Bread. Yes, the word bread. It was quite popular in northern India. We use to call stupid people bread. Like, "Tu bread hai kya?" (Are you bread?)
This was alternative to the word "chutiya", which is a curse word, that we could use in front of teachers and elders.
bbm me
Don't hear "house" meaning to destroy something anymore.
Ima house you.
I'm about to house this burrito.
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Nobody says "cool' anymore. It feels weird when I say it unless I'm trying to be tubular or bodacious.
Or I'm hanging with my boys Fido Dido and Cool Spot drinking a nice glass of Sprite.
I say "cool" though
I have some bad news for you...
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Grody.
I still call things grody, but it's apparently twee and shit to say now.
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