My friend, a fellow mom to an 11-year-old, sent me this helpful vocabulary update:
In return, I told her about how I had recently learned that “you sold” is something you say to someone who did a bad job—because one of my kids tearfully told me his brother had said it to him.
My older son also sometimes starts sentences with “POV:”. I knew “POV” from Instagram reels and Tiktoks (in addition to the ancient phrase “point of view”), but now it’s in actual dialogue. I think it’s a version of how we used to say, “This is you:” or “I was like…” but also? I don’t care. I know it’s not for me. Yet it’s funny to hear.
In this vein, my friend Christina told me about her son hearing the Tiktok-famous phrase “Fax, no printer” (in lieu of the term “facts”) and trying to use it but saying “Copier, no printer” instead. And he adorably thought “ikr” stands for “I can’t relate.”
I’ll add all these to my youth lexicon. What cool slang are the kids in your life using these days, accurately or not? When we learn what they’re saying, we can confuse them over the weekend when we casually drop terms they thought we didn’t know. 😈
PS If you have a little one and they’ve made up their own slang, tell us. Theirs is probably better than the older kids’.
My 6yo picks up slang at aftercare. (It’s always aftercare.) He came home and asked, “Mom, are you Gucci? Am I Gucci?” I assured him we were both Gucci.
My kid also advised me to use the term "bet" here as in "You know it" but I disappointed him by letting him know we were saying "bet" in my day as well.
I wonder if they still say "psych!" (sike?) or if there's a replacement for that.
I know about as much Gen Z slang as Martin Scorsese, which I know because of this incredible video his daughter made: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8rRNaTV/
But also in my actual life: my 7 year old has become fixated on the term “sus” to the point that he and his friend make fake money called Sus Bucks (???)
These are all so good! My 12yo texted my husband & I a bunch of pictures of the giant organs (!!!) they were dissecting in Science class and my husband responded "Unsubscribe" (A+ adult slang) and he responded "What do you mean." We still got it!
not really slang, but my son (4) will start his independent play time by saying "welcome to my channel! so, today we're...... (fill in whatever he's doing)" and i'd heard other parents say how their kids mimic youtube/tiktok/vine slang, but it still makes me giggle whenever he does it. and if i say anything that acknowledges i just heard him talking to his make believe "viewers" he gets so embarrassed.
My 7yo is just starting to learn/notice slang at her school (functionally only child as bro is 25) and she is fascinated with “Ayo” which she doesn’t use herself but talks about how everyone else uses it (which seems to be like “hey” or “yo” from back in my day). It is pretty funny.
But her best personal slang ever was the three months when she pronounced chimpanzee as something that for all the world sounded like Joe Pesci. We had a little toy joe pesci and we visited the joe pescis at lincoln park zoo and were joe pescis better or were gorillas better? Literally the best. She was 2.
The kids were taking forever to get ready to start getting ready for bed and saying “POV: this” and “POV: that” until I shouted “POV: you’re taking a shower.” And it backfired because they wouldn’t stop laughing and talking about it.
My 6 year old recently started saying “hell yeah” when she is interested in something. It’s not just “hell yeah” it’s the way she says it. All hulk hogan hell-yeah-brother-esque. I died laughing. Obviously we’ve had the don’t say that at school talk but I can’t be mad when she says it. It literally makes my insides tingle with glee 😂 not that that’s necessarily slang.
But I get the occasional “bruh” and she does say “bussin’” too. both of which make me cringe 🫣
Also we have family slang which I now force onto the entire world- my kid never wanted his food hot or cold, just "medium" and for some reason now that means whenever something happens that's not bad but not great I will describe it as "medium" "pretty medium" "very medium" It's so useful as a phrase! (Maybe I also picked it up from somewhere I'm not that creative with language lol)
Bussin’. Apparently it means cool, great, delicious. Used most often with food I think? That’s from my niece and nephew. My 10 year old introduced me to “ate” as in “She ATE that” which means she killed it, owned it, slayed it. 🤷🏽♀️
My 13 year old has recently informed me that 'riz' means cool, like 'lit.' She called me 'bruh' sometime shortly after that. I really didn't anticipate being called bruh so much as a mother.
NPC (non player character) is big with my teen boys, used to describe a person who just kind of exists in the periphery/background of their lives. One of my guys is much more talkative than the other, so he sometimes says his brother is a total NPC at school. (Sick burn!)
We use a babysitting service and our most recent college age sitter described our evening plans as “awesome sauce.” I have a feeling this was a one off weird kid, but we were both amused by the possibility that “awesome sauce” was making a resurgence.
When my neurodiverse kid was 3, his vocabulary was a bunch of useless words (octopus, volcano) learned from alphabet songs and one useful word “abasi.” It seemed to mean something to the extent of “I would like that (thing, activity, etc.) please facilitate it for me, mother.”
We have NO IDEA what abasi came from or was supposed to be. It could be Farsi, or Thai or Malay. It could be several words jammed together.
A little late to the game so maybe this got said already, but my decades younger sisters (cuz we have different moms and dudes can fertilize for life) recently responded to a story I told them about someone being unpleasant to me with, “Tomato tomato!” Tomato was repeated twice BTW and pronounced the same way both times so I was very confused. I’ve been told it means BOOOO THUMBS DOWN, like you are throwing tomatoes. So that was their response to the mean person in my story. Tomato tomato!
“Bruzzen” is one my oldest son and his friends say. Pretty sure they made it up. It’s a combo of brother-cousin - what you’d call your ride or die absolute best friends.
My kids are older now and it's a lot of let's goooo and sus etc. BUT one thing from when they were young that we still use is heat seaters for seat heaters. It just sounds so much better! Also moustachioes for pistachios 😂
"Drip" -- my 19-year-old, who just went off to college a couple months ago, dropped this one in a conversation recently and it floored me.... that I have to Google this stuff now 😥 When did this happen?! 🤣
(Also, I was really late to the party on "tea" -- though I heard that at work from some co-workers in their twenties 😃)
My 5 year old does not press the doorbell, he rings the dingdong. I will never correct him. My 7 year old picked up Bruh and Bro at before and aftercare and I am forever correcting him that I go by mommy these days.
Perhaps amusing only to me, but my 17yr old daughter and I call each other bro all. day. long. and it cracks us up. (The dog is the only male in the household, which I think makes it funnier?) Meanwhile, a male friend absolutely loses his mind when his 11 yr old son calls him bro.
I work in a middle school and the things I hear! Rizz is big right now. Rizz equals charisma/your reputation. As in, “How’s your rizz?” with an answer of “Not good, bro” or “On fire man, you see who I was with after class?”
Thank you, all, for this—I needed a good reason to laugh out loud this morning! My 10-year-old, AKA my source of all slang, and total devotee of "sick" (everything good is always sick) is battling COVID ... but her spirits are good and her symptoms are better, so all looking up. Thanks too for the Martin Scorsese link—it was totally sick!
Courtesy of Mr. A-Game on YouTube (highly recommended if your kids like Zelda and/or Mario, Mr. A is funny and completely kid-friendly) -- my 7-year-old sprinkles little meme sounds into his soccer trash talking. He'll sing Josh Groban's "you raise me up" when he's made a good play, or shout "parkour! parkour!" from The Office when dribbling. Also heard at practice, "let him cook!"
My daughter uses “mid” a great deal . I think it means less than good ,as in bad, but not the worst.
Speaking of Joe Pesce …When she was a toddler and I’d use the quasi-Italian expression “capisce” to punctuate explaining things to her like “Upstairs is off limits, ka-peesh?” And she started responding in her own invention of the affirmative by saying “ka-posh”. It continues to this day.
My 4 y.o. recently revealed that some things in the world are “hanks.” She tried to explain it by telling us which things are hanks and which things are NOT hanks. Maybe AI would figure out the pattern, but I’ve got nothing for a definition. All I know is there’s a fat file folder in her mind called “hanks” and we’re always asking her “Is ____ a hank?” She answers with that teenage “duh mom obviously” tone and it’s hilarious
One that really amazes me is ‘You tryin’ As in ‘You tryin to go to Starbucks?’ It really means ‘Do you want to’ but I find it fascinating that the phrase turns it around as if the ‘asker’ is now the ‘one being asked’ and makes an assumption. Making the ask more oblique, putting some space there. I feel like Gen Z have these interesting ways to put emotional distance between themselves even though they are constantly communicating/being seen. See next two items..
My high school students say "slay." In response to something cool: "That's slay." Or it can also mean doing something cool. The other day, one of them asked, "So, let's say we don't exactly slay on this test. Can we do retakes?"
I am in my mid 30s and just moved to a college town, so this one is a little PG-13- “dead ass”. This gen z guy was walking down some bleachers and stumbled and said to his friends, “I almost fell dead ass.” It made me laugh out loud in the moment and then at myself later when I realized how not cool I was and how I had misinterpreted it! I thought it was like a style of getting hurt? Or idk just that he almost fell on his ass. No-I told the story to my husband and he (who works with college kids) said it means “truth” or like “true story”.
It’s weird to relive an event and realize you actually missed the meaning, or you thought someone was funny and made up an interesting way of saying something, but they really didn’t. It honestly weirdly messed with me.
Oct 6, 2023·edited Oct 6, 2023Liked by Claire Zulkey
Slay - verb, adj, noun. You were awesome, that is awesome, etc. but said it a chill way. ‘You slayed’ or just a positive response to something like let’s get ice cream - slay. Girls use this, boys don’t really
My husband heard 2nd hand that Gen Z frat boys use the phrase “Let’s goooooo”, but in a very chill, stoned sort of way, to encourage one another. Note: I have not seen this out in the wild.
Our toddler has created a whole slate of almost-there words that I hope he never gives up: “pump man” for pumpkin; “mazagine” for magazine; and “lew-room” for living room. I’m disappointed that he no longer says “gonu” when he wants a remote control. And recently, he pulled down my shirt and said “tatas” when he saw the upper half of my boobs.
In our household we started using Caroni to describe shitty drivers instead of calling them other names or using adjectives the kid would be prone to repeat “What a Caroni!” -in Bugs Bunny voice
I had to come back & add that this weekend my nearly 13yo taught me that if someone looks great or is on point, they "eat". Olivia Rodrigo eats in "get him back."
Additionally, the kids today call each other the see you next tuesday word as a term of affection, like seeing a friend in a cute outfit you may say "you look c*nty!" or "Hi, c*nt!"
My 6yo picks up slang at aftercare. (It’s always aftercare.) He came home and asked, “Mom, are you Gucci? Am I Gucci?” I assured him we were both Gucci.
My kid also advised me to use the term "bet" here as in "You know it" but I disappointed him by letting him know we were saying "bet" in my day as well.
I wonder if they still say "psych!" (sike?) or if there's a replacement for that.
I know about as much Gen Z slang as Martin Scorsese, which I know because of this incredible video his daughter made: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8rRNaTV/
But also in my actual life: my 7 year old has become fixated on the term “sus” to the point that he and his friend make fake money called Sus Bucks (???)
These are all so good! My 12yo texted my husband & I a bunch of pictures of the giant organs (!!!) they were dissecting in Science class and my husband responded "Unsubscribe" (A+ adult slang) and he responded "What do you mean." We still got it!
not really slang, but my son (4) will start his independent play time by saying "welcome to my channel! so, today we're...... (fill in whatever he's doing)" and i'd heard other parents say how their kids mimic youtube/tiktok/vine slang, but it still makes me giggle whenever he does it. and if i say anything that acknowledges i just heard him talking to his make believe "viewers" he gets so embarrassed.
My 7yo is just starting to learn/notice slang at her school (functionally only child as bro is 25) and she is fascinated with “Ayo” which she doesn’t use herself but talks about how everyone else uses it (which seems to be like “hey” or “yo” from back in my day). It is pretty funny.
But her best personal slang ever was the three months when she pronounced chimpanzee as something that for all the world sounded like Joe Pesci. We had a little toy joe pesci and we visited the joe pescis at lincoln park zoo and were joe pescis better or were gorillas better? Literally the best. She was 2.
The kids were taking forever to get ready to start getting ready for bed and saying “POV: this” and “POV: that” until I shouted “POV: you’re taking a shower.” And it backfired because they wouldn’t stop laughing and talking about it.
Family slang from my three-year-old: airpods, especially because I use them almost exclusively for podcasts, are eartalks!
My 6 year old recently started saying “hell yeah” when she is interested in something. It’s not just “hell yeah” it’s the way she says it. All hulk hogan hell-yeah-brother-esque. I died laughing. Obviously we’ve had the don’t say that at school talk but I can’t be mad when she says it. It literally makes my insides tingle with glee 😂 not that that’s necessarily slang.
But I get the occasional “bruh” and she does say “bussin’” too. both of which make me cringe 🫣
Rizz - to have charisma but really it’s to get someone to like you, used as both a verb and a noun. He has a lot of Rizz but also he rizzed her up.
Also we have family slang which I now force onto the entire world- my kid never wanted his food hot or cold, just "medium" and for some reason now that means whenever something happens that's not bad but not great I will describe it as "medium" "pretty medium" "very medium" It's so useful as a phrase! (Maybe I also picked it up from somewhere I'm not that creative with language lol)
Bussin’. Apparently it means cool, great, delicious. Used most often with food I think? That’s from my niece and nephew. My 10 year old introduced me to “ate” as in “She ATE that” which means she killed it, owned it, slayed it. 🤷🏽♀️
I have a preschooler who calls skylights “sunlights” and I refuse to correct him
My 13 year old has recently informed me that 'riz' means cool, like 'lit.' She called me 'bruh' sometime shortly after that. I really didn't anticipate being called bruh so much as a mother.
NPC (non player character) is big with my teen boys, used to describe a person who just kind of exists in the periphery/background of their lives. One of my guys is much more talkative than the other, so he sometimes says his brother is a total NPC at school. (Sick burn!)
Low key/ high key - how you are feeling about something or not very much, kind of or a lot. I’m low key worried about the test tomorrow.
This isn’t so new, but since about 2020, everything that seems shady to my kids is “sus.”
My 10yo boy is also really into “vibes.” A typical conversation in our household is like this:
Kid: “Mom, can we throw away all of the clothes you bought me and get new ones???”
Me: ?!
Kid: “These clothes you buy me — they’re just not my vibe!!!!”
Me: “What *is* your vibe?”
Kid: “I don’t know… but just not (gestures in direction of closet and dresser) any of this!!!”
I’m sure I’ll think of more…
My 15yo sent me a text saying "ONG we are so good at running." Apparently, ONG = "on God," which means "I swear" or "verily," lol.
We use a babysitting service and our most recent college age sitter described our evening plans as “awesome sauce.” I have a feeling this was a one off weird kid, but we were both amused by the possibility that “awesome sauce” was making a resurgence.
When my neurodiverse kid was 3, his vocabulary was a bunch of useless words (octopus, volcano) learned from alphabet songs and one useful word “abasi.” It seemed to mean something to the extent of “I would like that (thing, activity, etc.) please facilitate it for me, mother.”
We have NO IDEA what abasi came from or was supposed to be. It could be Farsi, or Thai or Malay. It could be several words jammed together.
A little late to the game so maybe this got said already, but my decades younger sisters (cuz we have different moms and dudes can fertilize for life) recently responded to a story I told them about someone being unpleasant to me with, “Tomato tomato!” Tomato was repeated twice BTW and pronounced the same way both times so I was very confused. I’ve been told it means BOOOO THUMBS DOWN, like you are throwing tomatoes. So that was their response to the mean person in my story. Tomato tomato!
When my 6-year-old and his friends are playing outside I can hear them all yelling “Stop acting sussy!”
“Bruzzen” is one my oldest son and his friends say. Pretty sure they made it up. It’s a combo of brother-cousin - what you’d call your ride or die absolute best friends.
My kids are older now and it's a lot of let's goooo and sus etc. BUT one thing from when they were young that we still use is heat seaters for seat heaters. It just sounds so much better! Also moustachioes for pistachios 😂
"Drip" -- my 19-year-old, who just went off to college a couple months ago, dropped this one in a conversation recently and it floored me.... that I have to Google this stuff now 😥 When did this happen?! 🤣
(Also, I was really late to the party on "tea" -- though I heard that at work from some co-workers in their twenties 😃)
For the witches still on FB there is an amazing group dedicated to younger people explaining shit to older people. Highly recommend: https://m.facebook.com/groups/766624240616939/
My 5 year old does not press the doorbell, he rings the dingdong. I will never correct him. My 7 year old picked up Bruh and Bro at before and aftercare and I am forever correcting him that I go by mommy these days.
Perhaps amusing only to me, but my 17yr old daughter and I call each other bro all. day. long. and it cracks us up. (The dog is the only male in the household, which I think makes it funnier?) Meanwhile, a male friend absolutely loses his mind when his 11 yr old son calls him bro.
NPC --a phrase from gaming meaning "non-playable character." IRL, (I think) an NPC is a person who can't think for themself...
everything is mid, and the landline is a "1999" or "1900s" phone (it's a cordless from the 21 century
I work in a middle school and the things I hear! Rizz is big right now. Rizz equals charisma/your reputation. As in, “How’s your rizz?” with an answer of “Not good, bro” or “On fire man, you see who I was with after class?”
curious - is POV pronouced p-o-v or p-aah-v ?
My child learned "sick" for cool from some of our older neighbors but he is six and it's so hilarious to see him try to be cool
A million years ago my kid and his friends starting calling everything cool ‘beast’ (that’s beast!), which for some reason was so funny to me.
Fire - awesome, cool That’s fire. Mostly boys use this one
Thank you, all, for this—I needed a good reason to laugh out loud this morning! My 10-year-old, AKA my source of all slang, and total devotee of "sick" (everything good is always sick) is battling COVID ... but her spirits are good and her symptoms are better, so all looking up. Thanks too for the Martin Scorsese link—it was totally sick!
Courtesy of Mr. A-Game on YouTube (highly recommended if your kids like Zelda and/or Mario, Mr. A is funny and completely kid-friendly) -- my 7-year-old sprinkles little meme sounds into his soccer trash talking. He'll sing Josh Groban's "you raise me up" when he's made a good play, or shout "parkour! parkour!" from The Office when dribbling. Also heard at practice, "let him cook!"
My daughter uses “mid” a great deal . I think it means less than good ,as in bad, but not the worst.
Speaking of Joe Pesce …When she was a toddler and I’d use the quasi-Italian expression “capisce” to punctuate explaining things to her like “Upstairs is off limits, ka-peesh?” And she started responding in her own invention of the affirmative by saying “ka-posh”. It continues to this day.
I don't know if a link will work here, but this is my Rosetta Stone:
https://shutupandtakemymoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/i-find-it-kinda-bussin-i-find-it-kinda-cap-meme.jpg
My teen boys say “cap” and “no cap” aaaaaalllll the time. It basically means “BS” and “no BS” but they use it after every sentence.
“I am totally on top of my homework. No cap.”
“Cap! Bruh, I call cap.”
“No cap!”
“Cap!”
On an endless repeat.
My 4 y.o. recently revealed that some things in the world are “hanks.” She tried to explain it by telling us which things are hanks and which things are NOT hanks. Maybe AI would figure out the pattern, but I’ve got nothing for a definition. All I know is there’s a fat file folder in her mind called “hanks” and we’re always asking her “Is ____ a hank?” She answers with that teenage “duh mom obviously” tone and it’s hilarious
One that really amazes me is ‘You tryin’ As in ‘You tryin to go to Starbucks?’ It really means ‘Do you want to’ but I find it fascinating that the phrase turns it around as if the ‘asker’ is now the ‘one being asked’ and makes an assumption. Making the ask more oblique, putting some space there. I feel like Gen Z have these interesting ways to put emotional distance between themselves even though they are constantly communicating/being seen. See next two items..
My high school students say "slay." In response to something cool: "That's slay." Or it can also mean doing something cool. The other day, one of them asked, "So, let's say we don't exactly slay on this test. Can we do retakes?"
I am in my mid 30s and just moved to a college town, so this one is a little PG-13- “dead ass”. This gen z guy was walking down some bleachers and stumbled and said to his friends, “I almost fell dead ass.” It made me laugh out loud in the moment and then at myself later when I realized how not cool I was and how I had misinterpreted it! I thought it was like a style of getting hurt? Or idk just that he almost fell on his ass. No-I told the story to my husband and he (who works with college kids) said it means “truth” or like “true story”.
It’s weird to relive an event and realize you actually missed the meaning, or you thought someone was funny and made up an interesting way of saying something, but they really didn’t. It honestly weirdly messed with me.
Slay - verb, adj, noun. You were awesome, that is awesome, etc. but said it a chill way. ‘You slayed’ or just a positive response to something like let’s get ice cream - slay. Girls use this, boys don’t really
My husband heard 2nd hand that Gen Z frat boys use the phrase “Let’s goooooo”, but in a very chill, stoned sort of way, to encourage one another. Note: I have not seen this out in the wild.
Our toddler has created a whole slate of almost-there words that I hope he never gives up: “pump man” for pumpkin; “mazagine” for magazine; and “lew-room” for living room. I’m disappointed that he no longer says “gonu” when he wants a remote control. And recently, he pulled down my shirt and said “tatas” when he saw the upper half of my boobs.
Goat or Goated.
As in she is the goat. or this is goated.
I am him. Or he's not him.
My big kid started saying BUMPS in lieu of swear words. I think it's hilarious and have adopted it when I can.
In our household we started using Caroni to describe shitty drivers instead of calling them other names or using adjectives the kid would be prone to repeat “What a Caroni!” -in Bugs Bunny voice
I had to come back & add that this weekend my nearly 13yo taught me that if someone looks great or is on point, they "eat". Olivia Rodrigo eats in "get him back."
Additionally, the kids today call each other the see you next tuesday word as a term of affection, like seeing a friend in a cute outfit you may say "you look c*nty!" or "Hi, c*nt!"