# What is the latest high school slang? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 18, 2013, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265 "2013-03-18T15:19:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265/61 "2013-03-20T20:08:12Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > But I may be slow on that too, because after this thread, I asked my daughter’s father what dank was, and he laughed at me as if I were out of the loop. So, yeah. Getting old. I think, but wouldn’t swear to it, that “dank” swam like a salmon upstream, against the usual flow of slang. We little white middle class suburbanites were using it by the late 80’s, for sure. It meant only the really \*good \*weed. Contrast with “ditch” or “Indiana” (probably a regionalism). My best friend’s last name was very close to “Dank”, and we’d tease her mercilessly about it. (She was also a pothead, so, y’know…if the shoe fits…) Snoop used it on _Doggystyle_, though, so it’s been in at least some black subcultures since the early 90’s. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265/62 "2013-03-21T09:01:03Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > …Yeah, “baller,” in my experience, came first to mean basketball player in the early 90s (or possibly much older than that–but that’s when I first remember hearing it in pop culture), then at some point just anyone living a successful and wealthy (and usually flashy) lifestyle. As an adjective, it means something like “cool,” in the sense of being associated with these things. I actually wonder when the adjectival form became popular… I would guess, based on the way I’ve heard it used over the years, ‘ballin’ is a reference to drug dealing. When you ‘deal in weight’, then you aren’t one of the little street hustlers who sell dimebags on the corner…you sell eightballs…you ball out. I realize that a basketball player is a ‘baller’ too, but I think generally speaking, the ‘balling’ term comes from the drug dealer scene. Speaking of the drug dealer scene, that is another case of slang taking forever to ‘go viral’. A drug dealer will call a hundred dollar bill a ‘ball’, and have done that for years (like a 20 is a dub and a 1000 is a stack and 10,000 is a rack and so on…) But you won’t see ‘ball’ used like that much outside of the ‘trap’ or outside of where drug dealers do their thing. If you try to go to UD to look it up, it will either not be there, or will be there with a handfull of votes…because drug dealers aren’t the main ones putting definitions on Urban Dictionary. That is the beauty of slang, really. The more people try to get up on it, the more they are really pushed out of it. > [@Max\_Torque](#): > > There’s been a trend lately of the media talking about “swag” at conventions and such, treating “swag” as though it’s an acronym: “Stuff We All Get”. Smells like a BS after-acronym to me. I would say that anytime you see an acronym as an explanation for a slang term, (i.e., Phat = pretty hot and tempting), it’s almost certainly bullshit. If you were around in the 80s when graffiti artists tagged the word here or there, or hip hop artists put the lyrics in their album covers, you will see it was spelled ‘fat’. That PHAT stuff came later. > [@Shodan](#): > > The problem is the part where he sings about wearing your granddad’s clothes. I’m old enough to be his granddad, and if he looks like me when I am allowed to pick out my clothes, he is not going to look “awesome”, he is going to look like a clueless old fart with no more fashion sense than a hobo… > Regards, > Shodan Well, ok, he is trying to be cute with the song, but the overall message is genuine and not ironic…he really is calling out those who spend to much for labels. > [@WhyNot](#): > > I think, but wouldn’t swear to it, that “dank” swam like a salmon upstream, against the usual flow of slang. We little white middle class suburbanites were using it by the late 80’s, for sure. It meant only the really \*good \*weed. Contrast with “ditch” or “Indiana” (probably a regionalism). My best friend’s last name was very close to “Dank”, and we’d tease her mercilessly about it. (She was also a pothead, so, y’know…if the shoe fits…) Snoop used it on _Doggystyle_, though, so it’s been in at least some black subcultures since the early 90’s. Yeah, this thread enlightened me. After talking to others about it, I realize how out of the loop I am. Many rappers have been using it on a regular, it seems. My ex rapped some Jay Z (you know I never liked Jay Z and I’m not a huge fan of Snoop either, outside a few hits by both of them) and Jay Z was definitely using ‘dank’ for weed. So I sharpened my slang on the dope…something I never thought I would say. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265/63 "2013-03-21T09:39:31Z")
This is like when politicians cite Doom as an example of video game violence. ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265/64 "2013-03-21T10:00:21Z")
> [@Paintcharge](#): > > Isn’t swag the stuff you have that makes you look cool? I seem to remember hearing about the “swag bag” that celebrities would get at events like the Oscars back in the 80’s. I used to hear swag used as stuff you got from a heist, burglary, etc. It usually imply theft of some kind. I assumed that morphed into meaning that taking all the shit they gave you at galas like that was the same as stealing it. > [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > A drug dealer will call a hundred dollar bill a ‘ball’, and have done that for years (like a 20 is a dub and a 1000 is a stack and 10,000 is a rack and so on…) I’ve usually heard/read 1000 referred to as ‘large’ as in ‘yeah, I dropped 5 large at the casino last night.’ My fave name for pot I picked up in the UK - skunk. I still don’t really understand it but I guess a lot of people think that’s what it smells like. At the time hash was easier to get anyway, much trippier. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265/65 "2013-03-21T10:10:14Z")
> [@deltasigma](#): > > I used to hear swag used as stuff you got from a heist, burglary, etc. It usually imply theft of some kind. I assumed that morphed into meaning that taking all the shit they gave you at galas like that was the same as stealing it. > > I’ve usually heard/read 1000 referred to as ‘large’ as in ‘yeah, I dropped 5 large at the casino last night.’ > > My fave name for pot I picked up in the UK - skunk. I still don’t really understand it but I guess a lot of people think that’s what it smells like. At the time hash was easier to get anyway, much trippier. Skunk is a particular kind of weed, I think, which smells like skunk. Man, don’t get me started on British slang. Cockney rhyming slang is just too far out of my grasp to ever master it, so I can only admire it from afar. Since I don’t foresee me being in the ghettos of England anytime soon, I will always just feel like a cornball on the outside, only getting the played out Hollywood version of the slang…never getting the real cutting edge version. Too bad for me. I refuse to even try to fake it for fun, because I know that anything I try will be some watered down old ass offshoot of the real deal. Sucks the fun out of it for me. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265/66 "2013-03-21T11:51:34Z")
> [@Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](#): > > Other uses of Random! are funnier, like when someone gets a super extra long french fry at McDonald’s, or two class mates meet up on a bus. Like OMG, so Random! Love how kids these days are so aware of the essentially stochastic nature of the quantum mechanics which fundamentally drive the behavior of the observable universe. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265/67 "2013-03-21T12:03:04Z")
“Skunk” is a descriptor for, yes, strong smelling weed. It’s not the name of a specific strain like Maui Wowie\* and Blueberry Cough\*\* are, but a reference to any of several varieties of weed with an odor of skunk. And yes, some weed does smell like skunk spray that you’re smelling from about half a mile from the skunk - the oddly good, non tear producing scent of skunk spray. Many potheads think that “skunkweed” or “skunky weed” is strong weed, but I don’t think there’s really a very strong correlation between skunk and strong. wikipedia maintains that skunk weed can vary from 6% THC (low, pretty much ditch weed) to 20% THC (Cancel your classes, order a pizza. And cheesy bread. Do they have wings?). \*one of the older named strains, I believe. Old hippies wax nostaligic about Maui Wowie. It’s not skunk; it’s got a sort of pine/citrus odor. \*\*Also not skunk weed. Yes, it smells like blueberries and yes, it makes you cough; Yay for descriptive titles on the dope! 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-latest-high-school-slang/653265.md?page=3)