Ratchet has been urban slang for a long, long time. Recently, my little white, upper middle class debate kids have started using it. . . totally improperly. For a woman to be ratchet, for instance, she needs think she’s hot shit. . . while really being a hot mess. You know what a hot mess is, right?
Anyway, the kids are now using ratchet to mean stupid. Sort of in the way kids in the not so distant past would say ‘gay’ to mean ‘stupid.’ ie: “Ugh, that movie is so ratchet!”
Help a geezer out. “Swag”. I’m guessing it doesn’t mean free tchotchkes given away at industry specific conventions?
Most people use “swag” as another way of saying cool. ie:
Person 1: I just got an A on my paper!
Person 2: Swag! Congrats!
So, if you have any confusion about meaning 1, just think of it as a synonym for groovy.
‘Swag’ can also mean a cool person with style. A man may have ‘swag’ if he’s wearing a nice suit, smells good, and is well put together.
I bought my grandson a new TV last year. His comment when he got it: “Baller!” I’m assuming that means “cool, daddio” in today speak.
Are you, by any chance, reading words from the pull-out lyrics to “The Chronic” by Dr. Dre, circa 1994? 
Kids that are full of themselves will call themselves “swag”.
Ah, *BUT … the cool kids look down on the douchebags that act all “swag”. And so they laugh at them behind their backs and claim that SWAG = “Secretly We’re All Gay.”
*still the most-used slang label ever, according to my college kids
swol = ripped = muscular/strong
I learned that from my high school students.
Swag is just short for swagger. I’m sure you’ve heard of a cool person described as having swagger or something along those lines.
And some of you do have a funny idea of what “latest” means. Not that I’m up on all of it, I just learned the word saditty the other day. Not sure how it flew under my radar for so long.
The slang at my High School, back in the early 80s, was very regional. I don’t think it was even used at the next school over (though that was about 50 miles away, as I lived out in the country).
Posting from phone, so don’t can’t post as much as I want to, but I will point out that ratchet means tacky and ghetto. If I had to guess, I would bet it’s derived from “wretched”, probably from down south. I heard it from southern folks first. I love slang. It is very hard to get into it though without either constantly using it with others who use it or really loving hip hopor both. When it comes to street slang, I mean. Urban dictionary is way off lots of the time.
It would be interesting (and I’m sure someone has done it) to see if slang, like fashion, is more uniform in the internet age.
I’ve heard that nowadays a popular slang term for drugs is “Joss Ackland’s spunky backpack”.
Wow this thread is making some of you look way out of touch!
I am 40 but since I play Warcraft I am completely up to date on today’s slang… try it! ><
I believe you are right with it being a derivative of wretched. And you are also right with the tacky and ghetto point. . .I just didn’t want to be the asshole white person saying it, so thank you for clarifying :p.
My 15 year old son uses “totes.” He also responds to something he finds funny by saying “LOL” rather than just laughing. He pronounces it as one word, lohl, rather than spelling it out el oh el. If he’s telling me about something that was funny earlier he’ll say that he lolled.
Just read back. JK is also in frequent use.
za and da is how cool kids say pizza and soda. We are too busy for unnecessary syllables
A kid at work was raving about some new video game and called it “dank”.
I guess that’s a good thing.
Ham= hard ass motherfucker
My favourite current slang (well, maybe a few years off current) but I still hear it is “Random”, used for something I would call bizarre or out-of-left field. But it is also used for uncategorized, like random people I don’t know. My student tenant would say things such as “Well I went to Jenny’s to watch a movie, there was her, her roommate,her roomate’s boyfriends and some Randoms. I thought it was gonna be a girl’s night but there were guys there and …long story short Random guy 3 and I ended up (some expression I don’t remember that meant making out and doing everything but sex)”
She “cheated” on her long distance boyfriend with Random Guy three. I really had no opinion on the boyfriend thing, but the fact she made out with a guy she was still calling Random3 kind of made me wonder.
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!
I’m laughing like a hyena at this!