Heh, I’m guilty of using that. I’d say it means your first definition, with a sarcastic twist. I think I use it most often when my kids ask for something that’s never going to happen.
I’ve heard these from my kids too, especially my older son who watches YouTube videos all the time. He also uses the term ‘simp’ a lot, which he says means a weak, beta male who is submissive to the women in his life. But the way he applies it is more to any male who treats women with equality and respect. As in, he might hear me apologize to his mom for something I did wrong and say “stop being such a simp, dad!” The kid is never going to get a girlfriend with that attitude.
I haven’t watched a lot of ‘YouthTube’ myself, except bits and pieces over my older kid’s shoulder when he watches in the family room, and there seems to be a nasty, far-right tinged, misogynistic quality to a lot of those videos. Especially the ones he watches. When the kids were younger, I got a device called “Circle’ made by Disney, that blocked any website or groups of websites on any device I wished. It had a ‘preteen’ setting, but that blocked almost all of YouTube and the kids both howled at that. So I thought, well, YT isn’t that bad. No nudity, nothing too hardcore…” so I left YT wide open and blocked the porn.
But looking back, I think my older kid would be in much better shape attitude-wise if I had completely blocked YouTube and left the porn wide open.
“Simp” is one that gets under my skin. My daughters are 7 and 5, so I haven’t heard that word in any of the stuff they watch or in their vocabulary (thankfully, still a bit early for that), but I’ve read it in Youtube comments all over the place. It’s very much a term, as you note, that draws its heritage from phrases like “hen-pecked” and “pussy-whipped,” but more broadly (doesn’t have to refer to a man in a relationship.) It fits in the same verbal mental space as a word like “cuck.” The other day I was watching a Youtube video about a chess streamer/Youtuber/International Master (Levy Rozman) talking about how he met his girlfriend. It was a very cute story. Started with an initial date or two, then the passage of a couple years, then him reaching out to her again, and they’ve been together since. Bunch of what I assume were teenaged boys commented on him being such a “simp” for, what, I couldn’t tell. Being nice to his girlfriend and saying good things about her in the video? For catching up with her years later and going on another date instead of taking a “fuck that bitch” attitude? Who the fuck knows. Enough other commenters challenged the notion, thankfully, but that male toxicity is troubling. Although, if I am being honest, I can’t say the culture was any better when I was a teenager, and I’m sure most women would agree. I’ve just hoped things would be better when my daughters get thrown into that world.
The thing is, there are many ways to say this, for example:
Do it this way from now on.
If it comes up again, do it this way.
In the future, do it this way.
This should be the way we do it.
Or even, just: “Do it this way.”
However, when some business buzz word comes into vogue, all of a sudden, everyone is always just saying “Do it this way going forward.” No other variations. That’s what I hate, is that all of a sudden, everyone is always just using this phrase.
Or even worse “Do it this way on a going-forward basis.” Makes me want to hit something.
That is a dialectal variant. I’m not particularly sure what dialiects. The US and UK dictionaries I checked only seem to have the “i-earn” (or similar), but Wiktionary does list the “i-run” pronunciation as a “variant.” It seems some Hiberno-English variants may pronounce it that way, but I’m not finding anything definitive; folks with English as a second language (for understandable reasons) will pronounce it that way, too. Plus I found some random guy from the Midwest who says it that way, but nobody backing it up as a regional feature. Your background is South Asian, correct? Is it standard there, perhaps? Indian English is its own set of dialects, with their own pronunciation and grammatical variants, so maybe that’s it.
It’s entirely possible that my middle-aged, terminally unhip Gen X ass might have gotten it wrong. But that’s how I’ve heard it used, and how I use it; as a synonym for really: “I low-key did not expect Billie to rock out on 'Happier Than Ever”!
I’ll troll YouTube tonight to see if I can find an example of low-key used as an intensifier.
There’s a reddit thread about it here that conforms with how I’ve personally encountered the word. It’s a living usage that has changed a bit, so I won’t be surprised if it’s used differently by different subgroups:
Dictionaries are not good at keeping up with slang which is why you want see the adverbial use in most dictionaries. It’s also why you won’t see highkey (the opposite of the slang, adverbial lowkey) in dictionaries.
Your definition of “kinda/kind of” is pretty accurate, especially for the examples you gave. Lowkey also means something like subtly, discreetly/secretly, moderately, or modestly. Not done openly, expressively, or explictly.
For example, after a poor first date, you could lowkey signal you’re not interested in another date by not responding to further attempts at communication. Alternatively, you could highkey signal your disinterest by explictly stating it.
Well, that’s the 1903 etymology of it. The newer use has “etymology unknown” listed in Wiktionary.
1980s (American rap culture). Unknown. Possibly from a respelled clipping of sympathetic , a clipping of simper ; a blend of sissy + pimp ; or a special use of simpleton (above).
Same here. Ten years ago that was the phrase my mom used to inform me the neck pain she’d been dealing with was caused by a tumor pressing on her nerves, and the cancer had already spread to her liver and was terminal. Absolutely hated the phrased since then.
As far as, like, filler words, like, I try not to use “like” and, you know, “you know” but as someone who was a teen in the 80s, it’s pretty much hardwired in my brain, dude. At least I’ve stopped using “bitchen”. And by far the worst filler word in my house is the Mandarin one that sounds horrifically like the n-word. I know it’s equivalent to “um…”, but I still always remind my wife to be careful outside the house when in the US.
That phrase is all about doomed resignation with a soupçon of (I admit I could be reading this into it), “and there’s not a goddam thing anyone can do about it, including you.” It comes across (to me anyway) as somehow colder than “what will be, will be.” Maybe 'cause Doris Day never sang a song called, “It is what it is.”
It’s worth considering, IMO, that we’ve all seen “The Simps…ons” (obscured by clouds) for over 30 years now.
Scroll down a bit and you’ll see he confirms it.
Since Homer was my father’s name, and I thought Simpson was a funny name in that it had the word “simp” in it, which is short for “simpleton”—I just went with it.
