FluentU, a website connected with BuzzFeed has a list of twenty-0ne American Slang words and definitions to enlighten where we are currently with our slang in the United States. What words will stick around? What words will our grandchildren never know? As we learned in Into to Linguistics (English 370) Slang is something used by the… Continue reading Modern Slang

For part of our research we thought that it would be interesting to conduct a survey. For the survey we created a list of five words that we thought were common words, or phrases from past generations. While completing this project we found that a common theme was there are a lot of words people… Continue reading Survey – How Would You Use It?

T.M.I was an acronym for Too Much Information /tu mʌʧ ˌɪnfərˈmeɪʃən/ was commonly used in the 1990’s. The acronym was commonly used when someone would over share information.  Even the band Duran Duran wrote a single called “Too Much Information,”  in 1993, which suggests that by the early 1990’s the phrase was in common English… Continue reading 1990’s T.M.I

Yuppie /ˈjʌpi / Acronym for a “young urban professional” The term was coined in the early 1980’s.   The term was to describe professional young money making consumers who were active in their lives. The term is not used commonly anymore but it is recent enough that most people know what it means.

Phat / \ˈfat\ African American English Vernacular is what originated this positive spin off of ‘fat’ to phat. It eventually became mainstream culture and was used in music and television. It was also very common in the 1990’s in the hip hop scene. It was used to describe a woman’s looks and then became used more and… Continue reading 1970’s Phat

Wicked /ˈwɪkəd/ The etymology of the word Wicked derived from Old English Wiccan and referred to negative terms as a bad witch or a bad Wiccan.                   In the 1920’s Scott F. Fitzgerald was the first to use the word with a positive context in his novel… Continue reading 1960’s Wicked

Drag /dræg/  is a word with many different meanings, some of which we still use today!  Websters dictionary defines drag as 1:  something used to drag with; especially :  a device for dragging under water to detect or obtain objects 2:  something that is dragged, pulled, or drawn along or over a surface: asa : … Continue reading 1950’s Drag

Dope /doʊp/ is defined as  1a :  a thick liquid or pasty preparationb :  a preparation for giving a desired quality to a substance or surface 2:  absorbent or adsorbent material used in various manufacturing processes (as the making of dynamite) 3 a (1) :  an illicit, habit-forming, or narcotic drug; especially :  marijuana (2) : … Continue reading 1940’s Dope

Cool \kul\ 1:  moderately cold :  lacking in warmth 2a :  marked by steady dispassionate calmness and self-control <a cool and calculating administrator — Current Biography>b :  lacking ardor or friendliness <a cool impersonal manner>c of jazz :  marked by restrained emotion and the frequent use of counterpoint d :  free from tensions or violence… Continue reading 1930’s Cool