Whenever I hear the term "epic fail" I think of how much I dislike urban slang, even though I use it more than I'd like to admit.
When someone says "epic fail" I think of a disaster of...well...epic proportions. Major stuff...nuclear accidents, plague, locusts, stuff like that. Certainly not the barista forgetting to make your double-shot Venti a skinny or Chick-fil-A being closed on Sunday.
Here are a few more snippets of slang that get my drawers in a twist... and yes, I realize "drawers in a twist" is probably considered slang.
Thirsty
My friend asked the barista (I know, barista is probably urban slang and I've already said it twice) for a cup of ice water with her coffee, declaring herself to be the "thirstiest girl ever." This caused the gaggle of teenage girls in line behind her at Starbucks to erupt in to a fit of giggles.
Some of you may be snickering. Some of you may be scratching your head without a flippin' clue as to why someone saying she was thirsty and needed a drink of water was even remotely ha ha.
If you're hip (or between the ages of 14 and 25) you know thirsty means horny. On the hunt. Looking to "getcha some." I had to have someone explain it to me a few months ago when I questioned why there was so much water cooler chit chat over a certain female coworker's thirst. It's hard to keep up with what the cool kids are saying these days, right?
Craycray
Or is it cray cray? Or is there a hyphen? So confusing.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know cray-cray (I'm a fan of the hyphen) is a euphemism for crazy. I'm gonna wave my hands in the air and wholeheartedly admit to overusing this one. As in:
People who don't replace the toilet paper roll make me cray-cray; or
Those kids wearing shorts in 30 degree weather? Well, they must be cray-cray!
Yadda yadda, you get the idea. Is "yadda yadda" urban slang? I'm not sure. Why say cray-cray? It has the same amount of syllables as crazy so it's not an abbreviation. Who knows? It is kinda fun to say, though.
Hilar and Totes Adorbs
I list these together because I'm not sure which one annoys me more. In case you can't figure it out, these are abbreviations for hilarious and totally adorable.
I'll admit to never having actually heard anyone say these things out loud, so maybe they're just ways to shorten Facebook statuses because people are too lazy to type ious? I guess I could probably excuse a 14 year-old girl for describing a kitten as "totes adorbs" but it would sound kind of weird coming from an adult.
Awesome Sauce
Guilty. This one is just fun to say. I like to think awesome sauce is just a notch above ordinary awesomeness.
Sick
I absolutely cringe when someone refers to something nice as sick, especially if that someone is older than the cutoff age to be considered a millennial. I recently heard a forty-something dude describe a sound system as sick when talking to a much younger guy. Maybe he was trying to be relatable...but just no.
That said, when I was a teen (which was exactly a long effing time ago) the catch phrase to describe something that was extra good was bad, or if my parents weren't listening, badass. I still say this sometimes, so it shouldn't really rub me wrong to hear a double cheeseburger or an episode of The Big Bang Theory described as sick...but it does.
Slang comes and goes. Over the past few decades, we've used groovy, outta site, bitchin' and my personal favorite, off the hook, to describe stuff we like. We use words like bounce, split, and jet when we could just say "hey, I'm leaving now."
Who knows why slang is so attractive but no matter what generation's cray-cray crazy catch phrases you adapt, there is some sort of universal appeal to using slang. Maybe it gives you a feeling of belonging. Maybe it's just more fun to say "uber" instead of a bunch and "vajayvay" instead of vagina.
I've talksled about how urban lingo makes me wanna roll my eyes sky high and yes, I'm aware that I've used good n' plenty of slang in trying to illustrate that it annoys me. But you won't catch me saying "totes adorbs"...not even about a cute puppy.
What urban lingo pushes your buttons?
This originally appeared on Jill's blog, Ripped Jeans and Bifocals. You can follow Jill on Facebook and Twitter.
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
