Deleting chat history...: The strange story behind short-lived slang

Some of the newest slang seems designed to fizzle out. See what this says about us. Plus, revisit ancient slang, and see what makes some terms survive centuries

Did we really need “rizz” (short for charisma; OED’s word of the year in 2023)? Or “goblin mode” (for unapologetically greedy behaviour; the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year in 2022)?

(HT Imaging: Monica Gupta)

If it seems like new terms are zooming your way faster than they can be jotted down, that’s because they are.

Internet culture — that behemoth made up of trendsetting YouTubers and TikTokers, X users and hashtag enablers — is coining new phrases with a mission. It’s an easy way to grab eyeballs, go viral and continue to surf the feed. We’re still compelled to mention American YouTuber and Twitch streamer Kai Cenat, for instance, who is credited with popularising “rizz” via Twitch in 2022.

Other examples of terms that seem designed to draw viral chatter include “orange-peeling” (the theory that suggests love is truer if the male is the type of person to peel an orange for the female); “almond moms” (mothers so obsessed with their child’s weight that they recommend a handful of nuts when their ward is hungry); “micro-cheating” (which encompasses niceness, flirtation and the odd rambling thought, and is not really cheating at all); “girl math” (which isn’t real); “loud budgeting” (setting financial boundaries when facing the pressure to spend; also known as… budgeting) and “polywork” (working multiple jobs).

Social media has become a graveyard of such phrases, which shine brightly in newsfeeds for a brief while but often do nothing to express a new idea, or illuminate an existing one in new ways.

What’s interesting about the use of words as a means of going viral, is what it tells us about where we are as a civilisation today.

New words are constantly being created, and always have been, says Valerie Fridland, a linguistics professor with University of Nevada and author of Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English (2023).

What’s different about today’s word creation is that this new type of community, the online one, uses language as its main point of connection, because the default points of connection, physical proximity and social interaction, are unavailable.

Given this key role of language, “words that capture what those people are interested in or amused by become more powerful,” she adds.

Even this by itself wouldn’t matter as much, without the flattened social and linguistic hierarchies that the online world provides. “We simply did not have this kind of spread-out social power as individuals in other eras,” Fridland says.

To some extent, viral word play has existed as long as language itself. “Think about jokes,” says Grant Barrett, an American lexicographer and co-host of the podcast A Way with Words. “They come from regular folk, not a joke factory. This is a vibrant continuation of what we’ve always done as humans, across all levels of authority and expertise.”

The difference, of course, is that it is far easier today than it has ever been, not just to make it to a joke book, but to make it to the dictionary.

New word views

It may be possible to democratise the system, but it is still fairly difficult to cheat it.

For a word to gain true staying power, it must serve a purpose. This remains true.

Terms that look set to survive include the apt and succinct “situationship”, the more generic but still useful “beige flag”, and likely “Swiftie”. (It’s hard not to see that one going down in history.)

How exactly does a new term race through language networks? Let’s step back a bit and look at the origins of such terms, typically grouped under the umbrella of slang.

Slang — which is defined as a casual vocabulary that emerges within a subculture, and is used as a way of identifying with that group — has typically emerged as a reflection of class and power wars.

As far back as the 6th century BCE, there are records of widespread concern around a colloquial form of Greek, called Koine, emerging and becoming popular as a sort of “street” reaction to the venerated Attic dialect spoken by the elite of Athens, Fridland says.

Thousands of years later, Cockney rhyming slang would sweep the streets of London, driven by a community of street vendors and shopkeepers gleefully thumbing their noses at the clipped vocabularies of the Oxbridge landed elite.

“Slang is a form of resistance against mainstream authority and formal language. As long as people push back against authority, it will continue to evolve,” Barrett says.

Within slang, it is typically the useful, succinct terms — particularly those that are easy to say and spell — that endure. “Cool” has remained popular for about half a century. “Fuck” has endured for centuries (likely because, sometimes, no other term of exclamation does the job quite as well). “Lit”, meanwhile, is brief but lacks heft and is fairly ambiguous, and seems unlikely to outlast Gen-Z.

Blends or portmanteaus tend to have a lower chance of success, says Barrett. A phrase that quickly makes headlines may not last very long, because it becomes overused and people move on to avoid seeming outdated or as if they’re trying too hard. “I often joke that once a word is discussed in The New York Times, it’s probably on its way out,” Barrett says.

As social media continues to lean on linguistic tricks for virality, more of the silly, goofy, cringy terms will likely leap out at us, because they stand out “like fireflies on a dark summer evening,” Barrett says. We don’t notice the everyday, utilitarian words that slip into our vocabulary, like “cringy”, he adds. “Because they fit perfectly in.”