My millennial (or maybe gen x) roommate spends a lot of time on tiltok, so she’s always teaching me (a gen z) new ‘gen z’ slang.
It’s fun, but on the other hand she has a pretty skewed perception of young people. She’s always watching engagement-bait content online, and she seems to think most people my age are complete idiots.
I mean don’t get me wrong, we are idiots, but we’re not a different species or anything lol.
People who complain about younger people are the biggest idiots who forgot that other idiots said the same about them a long time ago. Same with those who complain about older people a little too much.
Dontcha know? Millennials are any young kids they don’t understand. Who is “they”? Idk, probably boomers, since boomers are any old out of touch people they don’t understand.
I first assumed it was made by a millennial but that may be because I am one myself. If we do end up being the next mocked generation I will at least get a little amusement out of genx getting the shaft again.
Finally gonna is already a slang shortening of “I am finally going to…”. Or even better, “I will finally…”.
These terms used to bother me too, until I just full-on embraced them. Now I use them both ironically, and unironically, just never at work. They’re really good for text messaging because of their brevity. They combine multiple words into a single short word.
Use them ironically with someone close to you. They’re quite contagious. They will rapidly grow on you until you find yourself using them unironically too. Just don’t use them in situations where professionalism is expected, or clarity is important.
For funsies. Or because it will help you appreciate the words instead of resenting them. That’s why I did it. It’s just a suggestion though. You know what works for you.
It shows up in US Southeastern slang quite a bit. Usually it’s a bit stronger than ‘going to,’ ex. “I’m fixing to give him a piece of my mind.” ‘Fixings’ is also slang for side dishes here.
As a Southern gal myself, I got whiplash from the implication that people sayin "fixin" are trying to sound important.
I promise, among those of us who say that kinda thing, it's seen as a mark of ignorance and bein low class in general. The idea that a hillbilly accent can seem "important" is banana sandwiches to me.
I wouldn’t say it’s trying to sound important as much as it is trying to sound serious / no bullshit tone: “I’m fixin’ to whop yo ass”, or as a response to your boss bitching at you to do something: “yeah yeah I’m fixin’ to”
Usually implies “I’m” fixing to. Often said without much emphasis, as it’s just introducing the important part of the phrase. I think it’s actually a pretty neat way to keep the emphasis where it needs to be.
“Finna get outta here” uses 3/4 of the phrase to convey the important action of “leaving”
vs. “I’m fixing to get out of here” uses 1/2 of the phrase on useless info that “I” am the one doing the leaving and that it hasn’t happened yet but is about to.
It’s dialectic – there’s lot’s of them in the US, but this one afk belongs to Black American English, and is shortened from “fixin’ to.” Personally, I think it’s cool to see so many variations of English. The language is definitely not static; it is changing all the time!
I say “that’s fire”. But I also say “that’s sex”, which I don’t hear from anyone else. Idk why I just feel like when something is really awesome I like to liken it to sex.
In the 90s, when everyone started using the word fat/phat, I found out from an article that it’s usage that way could be traced back to 1920s jazz musicians. Everything old is new again.
I always thought the word “ginormous” (a portmanteau of gigantic and enormous) was totally modern, but then I read a book published in 1943 by a Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot which had “ginormous” in its glossary section.
Well these things always have their roots in the past and get re-appropriated from other uses, but I don’t recall seeing the term before 2 - 3 years ago.
As a millennial, describing something as fire, or mids, that was us. Y’all youngings are appropriating old people culture. That’s how we described weed in the 2000s.
Edit: also when kids were saying ‘ratchet’, that was a direct descendent of Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Ken Keasy used that name to be a homonym for “rat shit.” Next time you hear so e drop ‘ratchet,’ ask them what it means. They won’t even know.
It’s weird how old slang crops up like that. Ratchet was like, the 60s.
Edit2: I predict “kind” will get taken in, like “KB” or “kind bud” to mean “dope”. Like “you those shoes are kind, fam”.
I also predict that “beasters” might make it’s way in, but “beast” already meaning “dominate” might trip it up, because “beasters” were weed that was grown rushed with phosphates in the soil in indoor hydroponic labs, and that shit had lower THC content than most mids, looked better, but smelled off. Dead giveaway was hollow stems. Idk. Calling beats by dre headphones “beasters” would be a fitting insult to their products.
Fleek died the moment someone managed to get that fire started. Good riddance.
We used to call Mexican brick weed regs, or reggie, which I guess was slang for regular. Though I’m not sure why we called it that because it was much easier to find “fire” weed…which we called krypto or crippie. I think that was a south Florida thing though.
Ah, I’m in a border state, so brick weed was super easy to get. I had a buddy that would stuff a quart zip lock full for $40.
I personally find all of the high quality weed to be too strong. I don’t smoke enough to have a high tolerance, so even one hit can be too much. I wish shops would sell lower thc stuff, although I’ve had good success with D8
Yeah, we called it brick weed cause they were packaged to save space not the product… and we generally didn’t fuck with it because it wasn’t even green by the time it was up in New england
I bought a batch of that shit once that had been dyed green - you could tell because most of the green pigment ended up concentrated at the end of the fat stems. Nastiest shit ever, I’m probably lucky to be alive.
I’ve had Indiana ditch weed. There’s basically no THC in it at all. But it’s useful to sell to other high school kids who aren’t aware of that and then think they’re high when they smoke it.
I had never heard that slang for weed before in my life and I was meeting up with an old friend about 10 years ago who was going to get weed for me and he said, “I can get mids.” And I said, “I don’t do pills, man. I’m just interested in weed.” I thought he said “meds.”
I take it as average rather than great, which while it does have a less than stellar implication, doesn’t seem like it is inherently bad. Moreso a “meets expectations” with a hint of “there are better options available”
I hear mid and I think oh shit, cheaper for more that isn’t overpriced shiny crystal smelly shit but still almost smokes the same.
Kinda like every movie, song, and game ever describes as mid lol.
I swear people can’t just enjoy popcorn shit anymore which is all anything mid is. Sometimes I don’t want to watch the best movie ever. Sometimes I just want to watch stupid lighthearted comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Sometimes I just want another stock standard Meteoidvania or Harvest Moon clone.
When you quit chasing new highs constantly, even the old highs work well. And I don’t even smoke lol.
“Yo” is another one that the Zoomers love. I haven’t heard so much usage of that word since the mid 90s. And “bruh” is just another form of “bro”/“brah”.
Another good example is when twerking made a comeback a few years ago, despite not being a thing since 2000s hip hip.
there was a book (Terry Pratchett?) I read as a young adult that had a character called Yoless because it was the 90s and he didn’t ever say “yo” and everyone thought that was notable, weird and hysterical
I’d argue they’d know what it means but wouldn’t know the origin. Words evolve. I just learned this etymology now but I’ve always known what it meant implicitly when said. Tbh I assumed it was more local/rural slang when I was younger because I mainly heard it from other kids, not in media, etc.
I guess what I mean is if you asked them with regard to the etymology… Ratchet is a word. It has a meaning highly disparate from “shitty.” Like, it’s a tool. A noun. It does things.
So kids using this word against its actual meaning, ask them why and they won’t understand.
Like if I asked you why you were using the word ratchet (say yesterday), which is a tool that helps turn bolts, in place of the word “shitty” and you’d be all 🤷♂️🤷♂️
I thought it was an AAVE corruption of “wretched”. Nurse Ratched was certainly that, but it didn’t derive from the character’s name. Urban Louisiana slang, more like.
Is teaching AAVE a thing anymore or did they decide it was racist? I can’t keep up. I know for a while there was an argument that teaching AAVE at schools was designed to entrench a kind of linguistic class ghetto, but then you also had the liberal “hecking valid” argument, and I’m not sure what the current party line is.
Nurse Ratchet has nothing to do with African American Vernacular English, or “ebonics”.
Just gonna add that bringing AAVE and education into the conversation (which has nothing to do with ebonics or education whatsoever) makes you come off a bit like a possible race baiting dog whistler. It’s an amazingly easy thing to avoid, so I’ve tagged you with a cute lil nickname to keep track.
It’s all predominantly young kids adopting/appropriating American Black vernacular and calling it their own. Millennials did it, genz does it. Go ahead and down vote me, my back hurts.
See people say this like it’s Black vernacular but dont recognize that it’s just urban vernacular. Urban vernacular changes frequently because there’s more people around. The internet adopts it quickly, and it spreads from there, as the actual initial definition of a memetic concept.
There’s a reason society as a whole doesn’t co-opt rural Black vernacular, and it’s because it isn’t actually racially-based.
Exactly. I just had this argument with a couple of friends who were raised rich white kids, in the rich white neighborhood. They were criticizing me for appropriating black vernacular, and wouldn’t believe me that my entire neighborhood and school spoke that way. It’s inter-urban (poor) slang, not specifically black. Most of my neighborhood was Mexican, yet they all used these terms. Granted, they have different inflections on the words, but the vocabulary is pretty much the same. Anyways, now I have friends accusing me of racism for speaking the way I’ve spoken my entire life. I just hadn’t loosened up enough to speak that way around them before. Ain’t identity politics grand?
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