As a member of Gen Z, I find myself more often than not left out of the new slang words. I thought I was so young, but at the ripe old age of nineteen years, I have officially fallen out of the loop of Gen Alpha’s new slang words. From Gen X’s “gnarly” to our “lit” to the recent Alpha words of “choppleganger” it is extremely evident that slang words, in my opinion, are truly getting dumber.
In order to understand the descent into madness of “brainrot” slang, one must first understand some of the older slang words that have now fallen out of style. The Baby Boomer generation had many slang words of their day that are honestly pretty groovy. Some top words of their generation include “split,” “groovy,” “far-out,” and my personal favorite: “moo juice,” which is literally just a slang word for milk. Although we do not use these words anymore, many of their definitions are somewhat self-explanatory. “Split” means to leave, “groovy” means cool, and “far out” means that something is bizarre. This goes to show that although the Baby Boomers have fallen out of style, their slang remained recognizable to future generations.
Travelling up in time towards my parents’ slang, Gen X continues down the creative slang train. Some of their top words include “chill-pill,” “gnarly,” (no, not the KATSEYE song), and “dude.” Again, these words are able to be deciphered easily, as are many of the others I have not included that can be found here. Gen X further proves that a generation can have cool slang that can still encompass some sort of meaning.Â
Getting closer to modern day, we find Millennial slang terms are the ones most commonly found in current daily-speak. Millennials use their cringy forefront to create many slang words that even I use on a daily basis. From “bae” to “high-key,” their words remain a solid basis for what we define slang as now. Their slang can be kind of hard to decipher, like the term “slay” doesn’t mean to literally slay (aka kill) a person, it just means, as defined by wror.com, “to succeed in an all-encompassing way.” This is where I believe slang words started to take an undeniable downfall.
Now onto my current generation: Gen Z. These words make plenty of sense to us as current members. But having to explain “woke” to my parents was exponentially painful. Gen Z’s top slang words, according to Parade.com, include “dank,” “drip,” “bop,” and “bet.” These words look normal to us, but continue to go completely over the heads of our older generations.
Now, into the actual madness, Gen Alpha has really taken advantage of older generations’ unknowingness and has created a whole new genre of slang words. While doing research for this section, I found many articles explaining that understanding these words requires literal decoding in order to somewhat understand what kids are saying. This goes to show that slang words have effectively become dumber and nearly impossible to understand. The TikTok trend of having older individuals read current slang words proves just this fact. The mere act of them saying the words causes us to uncontrollably laugh. I mean, if I heard my grandma say “skibidi” I think I would spit out my water too. Some of Gen Alpha’s top slang words include – but are definitely not limited to – “delulu,” “sigma,” “gyat,” “bussin,” “mewing,” and the literal phrase “fanum tax.” More of these beautiful words can be found here in a website attempting to explain them for our poor older generations. In conclusion, by going down the rabbit hole of slang words, I have definitively decided that from Boomers to Gen Alpha – slang words are so much dumber. Although we must have a great appreciation for where they came from, slang words are a whole different ball game now. I mean, for the Boomers “chill out” was a slang term. Now, we use the name of a literal state, Ohio, to define something as cringy. Ultimately, slang words are a huge part of our culture and as new generations are born, more undecipherable words will emerge.