I thought of this when using the term ‘cool’ the other day. It’s an adjective / modifier I’ve used since I was a little kid. And to this day, it seems, at least to me, to still be, well, ‘cool’ to keep using.
Typically slang is a generational thing-- each generation comes up with its own language, which instantly becomes identified as ‘old-speak’ by the following generation. But my kids, 19 and 16 now, though I don’t know if they actively use the term ‘cool’, at least don’t call me out as an old fogey when I use it in speaking to them (and they never hesitate to do so otherwise).
Swear words, though I guess they’d count as a type of slang, are different-- they seem to take on an inter-generational immortality.
Idioms are a little different. Some can seem very old-fashioned and some can make the generational jump. Speaking of ‘cool’, I used to work with an older woman who often used the expression ‘cool beans’ and I thought that was a pretty quaint term at the time. Then I was watching the show “Pam & Tommy” and the Tommy Lee character used the term ‘cool beans’. Yes, the show takes place in the mid-90s, but it sounded funny: weird, wrong and anachronistic to hear his character use the term.
Maybe I’m basing a post around a somewhat flimsy premise, but I’ve always been fascinated with language and how it evolves on its own like a living thing, with little or no conscious intervention from the very people who speak it. Any other good examples? Feel free to offer counter-examples of slang terms and idioms that have aged badly as contrast.
I’m 61 and have used “cool” for decades. I’m not sure if it is experiencing a resurgence, but it seems to me that there was a period - maybe in the 90s or so - when use of “cool” was decidedly “uncool.”
I think of a visit to an aged, unwell uncle back in the 80s. His standard phrase was, “I’m hip!” As a young man, I kept thinking, “If there is ONE thing you ARE NOT…!”
Hmm…I don’t recall that at all (I’m 46.) Through my formative years in the 80s and 90s, “cool” was always – to my memory – fine. You’d have words like “radical!” or “tits” and “phat!” creep in, but I don’t recall them ever displacing “cool” or making it uncool.
This rang a bell with me. “Groovy! Far Out! Fantastic!” Where is that line from? I’m stuck between The Brady Bunch or the Freak Brothers.
I’m not so sure it dropped in use, but it’s opposite, “not cool” eclipsed it for a bit. I would have said late nineties so we are pretty close on that.
There’s a ton of idioms that have lasted a long time: wild goose chase, hit the sack, burn your bridges… The thing with idioms is that even if you don’t use/hear them regularly, people understand what they mean when they are used. Not sure if those type would qualify.
I’m a little younger than you (I’ll be turning 42 in a little over a month). And thanks to this discussion a vague memory has resurfaced of a friend telling me that no one says “cool” anymore, they say “radical” or “bad”, which probably would have been in the late 1980s. But I have no idea if that was a widespread cultural phenomenon, or just his own opinion, or if that is all just a false memory that I’ve created.
I don’t know if this meets the OP’s criteria, but the first thing I thought of was the use of “suck” and “sucks” to describe something bad, undesirable, unpleasant, etc. I remember hearing it quite a bit when I was in high school (early 1970s), but it had definite vulgar and sexual overtones, and you wouldn’t use it around your parents, teachers, or other polite company. Now you hear it almost everywhere, and it’s considered an inoffensive way to say that you don’t like something.
Personally, I hate the overuse of “sucks”—not because of its vulgar origins, but because it’s so vague as to be useless. If somebody says that something “sucks,” it doesn’t tell you a thing beyond “I don’t like this.” It’s lazy, like the frequent use of “fuck” as a meaningless filler word.
The problem is a lot of slang words endure for so long that they’re not even thought of as slang anymore. Take for instance “Gadget” which started as a nautical term in the late 19th century to refer to anything that didn’t have a name (or you just forgot), analogous to “thingy” or 'whatsit". People still use it today, with only a slightly more specialized meaning.
“Cool” ( which probably originated in the 50s), was big in the 60s, but faded away in the 70s. Then it seemed to come back in the 90s, and hasn’t gone away. I remember first hearing it again in the 90s after a long hiatus and being surprised it had come back.
Wasn’t “cool” used pretty commonly by Bart Simpson in the early Simpsons episodes? I feel like it was (along with a bunch of slang that fell out of date.) So I feel like “cool” was still considered “of the time” back then.
I also seem to remember “cool” being used in various forms in leet speak of that era, typically spelled as “kewl.” Though I suppose that could earn it a point in favor of being “not cool.”
The best I can remember is that perhaps there were fresher words to use alongside “cool,” but I do not remember “cool” ever being shunned.
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