One day, a few years ago, exhausted, I came up with what turned out to be an interesting assignment....completely off the cuff. That's how it often works, isn't it? It's how it often fails too, but let's focus on the positive, shall we?
I think it came to me while we were snoring through excerpts of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. His 18th century wit wasn't doing for them. Imagine that.
I came up with the idea that they should come up with 5 words of slang that they knew. The assigment was to write the word, define it, decide how to spell it, show the pronunciation (using the symbols in the dictionary), figure out the part of speech, and use it in a sentence. We'd create our own "dictionary". Even though I was making it all up two seconds before telling it to them, it was pretty successful.
I learned a lot. They learned a lot. They were awake. I was awake.
Goodness all around.
Anwyay, here were a few of the ones I remember:
Foolie- (n) friend
Woadie- (n) friend
Smash- (v) sex
Cake (n) money
Beastmode (n) relaxation
Ratchet (n, adj) 1.gun 2. looking fine
growns (n) rims on a car
thru (adj) drunk
blunted (adj) stoned
chickenhead (n) slut
gank (v) to rob
buttaface (n) girl with a nice body and an ugly face
throwed (adj) great, tight
bird (n) a girl who won't put out
Murk (v) 1. leave 2. murder
and my two favorites:
gutta (adj) looking good
chapped (adj) looking bad
Anwyway, while doing this, a girl asked me a very good question:
"So what kind of slang was popular when you was in school?"
I couldn't quite think of any.
I mentioned Valley Girl stuff, but truth be told that really didn't enter into our daily language much. It was more something you'd hear on tv. The best I could come up with was "groovy", which, as I explained to her, seemed to be resurrected initially to make fun of the 70s, but then caught on in earnest sometime in the 90s. I still can't quite think of much. Can you?
9 comments:
Golly, Jason, I've racked my brain and come up with nothing. Back in my day, a friend was a friend and a slut was a slut. A friend who was a slut was just a girl making bad choices and was going to end up pregnant, and if you stood too close to her you could get pregnant too. Drunk was drunk and no one cared about rims.
Of course, back in my day we all walked six miles uphill to school and back. I think I might have actually helped Mr. Johnson with a few words myself. I'm feeling pretty old and chapped.
I'm impressed with how you handled that situation.
Making out was called mugging...I never quite understood it, even though I did it a lot...
I'm going to adopt chapped. It'll be a hit amongst the geriatric set.
"Tits" is a favorite adjective of mine.
Gag me with a spoon is one better left to history.
Although I might get points off for it being a phrase.
Though I'm a tad older than you (umm)I take your point about most of our slang being available to be heard on tv. I don't think that much happens now. In our current world, if a word were used, say on a sitcom, by the time it aired several weeks later, that slang would've long been replaced with something new.
I guess my generation's biggest contribution to slang would be it's broadening applications (by the use of prefixes and suffixes) of the root word: fuck.
Miss J just got schooled...
Great assignment! Great list!
I was in high school in the 70s and we had so much excellent slang, much of it drug-related:
righteous = fantastic
(e.g. That was some righteous weed man!)
trippy
Speed
Acid
weed
pot
dope
doobie
Bogart (Don't bogart that joint.)
mellow
pigs
pad
threads
Scary how much I remember, and how often we talked about drugs!
Good Mr. Johnson !
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