Drip, simp, rizz, gyat: Your guide to the slang terms that... slap!

Cool kids these days are using slang like “gyat”, “rizz/rizzler”, “OTP”, “no cap”, “ded”, and “cheugy”. Do you know what they mean?

Grandpa pumped up the jam. His own grandpa was too hip to be square. Mum told people to talk to the hand. Older cousins got us to chillax, fo’ shizz. So, what are the cool kids saying to each other these days? Did cheugy even happen? Check out the words on the street.

• Gyat:

  Always typed, never spoken. It means Get Your Act Together. This generation has heard the admonishment so often, they’ve actually created a short-cut! Confusingly, it also means “goddamn”. It was first used by gaming streamer YourRAGE two years ago. He used the term whenever he saw someone attractive pop up during his streams. Expect to see it in online comments when users are astonished. More confusion: Some people use it as a noun, as slang for a great bottom. So really, it could be a compliment or a scolding and no one can tell.
• Rizz/Rizzler:

  Short for charisma. “You have the rizz” is the ultimate compliment to give a young influencer. According to the digital culture database Know Your Meme, Rizz was first used by Twitch streamers Kai Cenat, Silky, and Duke Dennis in 2021. A rizzler, then, is simply someone who can turn on the charm, a player. Watch out for rizzlers. Some come off creepy and have Negative Rizz. Gyat, rizzlers!
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  Skibidi.

  For gamers on YouTube shorts, a Skibidi is someone who’s trying to be funny, co-opting jokes and failing. The term might have come from an animated YouTube series called Skibidi Toilet, which follows a group of weird creatures who live in toilets and are trying to rule the world.
• Fanum tax:

  A tax, but in food. The terms come from the way comedy creator Fanum jokingly takes bits of food from when other members of the influencer crew AMP when they are eating in their videos. It roughly describes minor freeloading.
• Drip/Drippin:

  No IVs, no leaky air-conditioning. Drip is a compliment in the Gen Z lexicon. It means well dressed, well styled, on trend. If you’re Drippin, you’re probably dripping with money, jewellery, designer labels or simply confidence. Some claim it’s a New Jersey city slang, some think it was first coined among Atlanta’s rap communities. Others attribute it to the American teen series Zoey 101.
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  Simp/Simpin:

  Too be a simp is to go all out with your affections for someone you like. Not like love-bombing your crush. But obsessing over someone who might not even know you exist. At some point, Simp was short for a simpleton, but the word has taken on a different meaning after American rapper Too Short used it his 1990 song Pimpology. For him, simp means the opposite of pimp. In 1992, pop group Boyz II Men released a song called Sympin Ain’t Easy. Simps started out sad, now they’re owning the term. Typical!
• One True Pairing:

  The only correct form of OTP. It’s a fan’s support for an imagined relationship between two characters or actors that are not romantically linked. Fans often leave comments such as Ranveer and Alia are OTP. In real life, OTP can also refer to couples who one thinks are perfect together.
• No Cap:

  Swearing on one’s mother, but for the cool kids. It just means someone is dead serious. “She blinked 15 times in two minutes. No cap”. Cap, taken from African American Vernacular English, originally meant to brag, exaggerate or lie.
• Ded:

  The new LOL. As in died laughing.
• Cheugy.

  To be cheugy is to try too hard to be cool. Supposedly coined in 2013 by Gaby Rasson, a Beverly Hills High School student, who used it to describe people who were slightly off trend. However, the term blew up after being mentioned in the New York Times. Old folks found out. Young people stopped using cheugy because it was, well, cheugy.