In a recent newspaper obituary, a daughter described her late mother thusly: “She was a dope mom.”
A dope?
Well, hardly. A little research reveals that “dope,” as used by youth these days, is a replacement for what my much older generation would say was “cool.”
So I suppose this makes me, in contemporary parlance of the young, irretrievably “cheugy” – out of date. That word has been getting a lot of traction in trendy media not normally frequented by us cheugs.
But therein lies a modern cultural truth – our language, which has always been evolving, is changing faster than ever.
In fact, a study on the subject in England revealed a “seismic generational gap” in how we toss around slang, primarily because of social media and cell phone-speak.
One word that has caused bafflement among parents is “fleek” – if you are fleek, you are looking great.
Fleek has been around for several years, but its rapid initial advance is typical of how quickly slang can change these days.
A linguist explained to the online news site BuzzFeed that fleek “just bubbled up out of nowhere in a way that words didn’t used to.” Now, he said, “a word catches on, the link is passed all around, and two weeks later there are two billion people who are using this word.”
Thus it was with “cheugy” – ostensibly made up by a high school girl in Beverly Hills and spread by word of mouth until TikTok postings introduced it to hundreds of thousands.
So you’re either on the inside of all this or you’re not: In modern texting slang, it’s a simple matter of “iykyn” – if you know, you know.”
A tour around social media reveals a plethora of slang words now considered to be “bussin” – really good.
For instance, the daughter whose mother was “dope” could have gone further and said her mom was “drip” – having great style.
A few other coinages:
Boo’d up: Being in a romantic relationship.
Delulu: Derived from delusional; someone who’s detached from reality.
MOS: Mom looking over my shoulder.
Put “on blast”: Embarrass someone on social media.
Rizz: good at flirting.
Slap: Excellent.
Sigma: A cool (or should I say dope) male.
All this reflects a new generation developing its own way of describing the world, and that’s how it’s always been.
Still, it’s Greek to one whose own vocabulary of youth was punctuated with the likes of “square,” “hip,” “sock hop,”and “daddy-o.”
For sure, I’m not alone in wondering about my degree of obsolescence. For us, People magazine offers this advice on the subject: “If you’re still trying to figure out what the word ‘cheugy’ means, we hate to break it to you: You might be a cheug.”
Point accepted – and I’ll try my best to be dope about it.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
