‘Dank’ has been slang for weed since I’m pretty sure weed was invented. IE: ‘pass the dank.’ So, the kid is comparing his game to high quality weed. Totally an appropriate thing to say at work, imho.:rolleyes:
Incorrect. HAM means hard as a motherfucker. One goes HAM,like the song. Along the same lines, people will sometimes talk about going Honeybaked, which is just another way of saying they’re going HAM.
My sister and I (in our mid-twenties) use “za” just because we think it sound ridiculous (and somehow amusing.)
Don’t forget apps and zerts. Or, if you’d like moreTom Haverfoods.
I’m picking on you because I could sit and have a drink and kick some slang with you any day, sista.
disclaimer: Even though I am speaking like a knowitall, I don’t really know it all; I just love slang, especially ghetto/hip hop slang:
Going “Ham” has been out for years. Years before Jay Z or Kanye came out with the song H.A.M. and applied the backronym “Hard As a Motherfucker”, people were using Ham without the ‘hard as a motherfucker’ stuff attached. Rapper Pill has a song called “Trap goin’ Ham” released about 4 or 5 years ago and it certainly was in use before that. It did pick up more mainstream usage with Jay Z and Kanye West’s song.
That brings me to something I find fascinating about slang. It is never really ‘new’. What seems to happen is that something will be used, and used on a street level or underground level for YEARS or even decades before it finally ‘BLOWS UP’ on a commercial level. So, you will hear underground rappers talking about ‘bling’ starting in the 80’s, and then you will have a commercial artist make it the NAME of his top 40 rap song, and that is when it becomes more commonly used. In other words, it is almost impossible to say what the ‘new’ slang is.
One thing I have noticed with urban/black street slang is that it is common lately for a completely mundane phrase to become a ‘thing’.
For instance, the following phrases, which anyone would say at anytime about anything has become popular as slang phrases that everyone all of a sudden all say a lot…
“It’s not that serious” (people have been saying this a lot for some years now and I hate it on the same level as I hated “It is what it is”)
“If you like it, I love it” (I hate this one too).
“What you eat don’t make me shit” (I loathe this one. I have changed it to “what you don’t read doesn’t make me dumb”.)
If someone does something to you that upsets you, they may say, “Oh, I see you feel some type of way”, or you may say, “Yeah, I’m feeling some type of way about that.”
If you like something, you may say, “I fucks with that”. I like Diosa, so I would say, “Oh, yeah, I fucks with Diosa.” (this is the only ‘phrase’ one that I like)
So some of the above phrases seem strange to me that they should be singled out for constant use, but, there you have it.
I love ‘internet’ slang too, but I do notice that any internet slang that borrows from hip hop tends to be very, very old or very corny. Like that YOLO stuff from Drake…just corny. And that sucks because the philosophy behind it has been a life motto of mine, and now it’s all corny and wack.
And Diosa, you don’t fool me. I knew from the start that when you say ‘ratchet’ you are thinking "Jacked up multicolor lacefront weave with an inch wide "invisible part’, four inch nails sharpened to a stiletto point and silver stretch pants. I know girl, cause I’ve seen your pics and your style is the opposite of ratchet. But believe it or not…sometimes those ratchet girls be up in the club looking so… creative that I’m impressed. Sometimes.
But to recap real quick, it is hard for anyone to ever have a new slang because it is so gradual. Take for instance a hip hop group like Wu Tang. It became very popular and their slang began to take off as more and more people learned about the group. But their slang largely comes from something called The Nation of Gods and Earths which is basically a philosophy that teaches that the black man is god. So if a kid says to me today, “That’s my wiz over there” referring to his girlfriend, I realize that the slang may be new to that kid, but for me, remembering those NoGaE lessons as a child, I know that calling your girlfriend your wiz is more than something from a Method Man song.
I could talk about this subject all day, but I’ve rambled too long. I will instead thank you guys for introducing me to ‘dank’. I never knew that one.
[QUOTE=Nzinga, Seate]
But believe it or not…sometimes those ratchet girls be up in the club looking so… creative that I’m impressed. Sometimes.
[/QUOTE]
I actually agree with you. Sometimes, somebody can look so ridiculous that it just works. Take, for example, a lot of Nicki Minaj’s early looks-- think just post mixtape, just signed, still a feature girl. She’d wear those stretchy pants with painted on pockets, the hot pink and black weave, spider lashes, long, airbrushed acrylics, a Barbie necklace,and bamboos. . . and look fucking fantastic. It can happen.
I’ve only ever heard white, middle class, suburb living stoners use the word ‘dank’. Except I’m pretty sure there’s at least one or two rap songs about passing the dank. Maybe I’m misremembering.
Yeah, I know what you mean. And also, Lil’ kim in thisera. You gotta have that certain something to pull it off, I guess.
My teen just referred to something as “fresh.” As in “cool.” As I chortled at her for using 80’s slang, she informed me that Jersey Shore had made that current again.
If my middle school students don’t stop using “salty” to mean “oh, you just got told”, I may have to fail them all.
“Salty” means you are upset that and acting pissy because you (usually) got put in your place/ look stupid/ got played.
My favorite slang story from late:
I’m Facebook friends with some folks who are about a decade older than I am (so, late 30s, early 40s) and their Facebook friends skew a bit older than that. Anywho, one day, a 37 year old friend posted this after hearing that ‘Thrift Shop’ song by Macklemore: “This song keeps talking about popping tags, what the hell does that mean?”
Cut to 10 different people all postulating about what popping tags means-- and they’ve all decided it means stealing. One declares that he looked on Urban Dictionary and it defines it as stealing, so it’s definitely stealing. One says she used to work loss prevention and they used to listen to the sound of popping tags to know someone was stealing, so it’s definitely stealing.
So, I come in and point out that. . . well, that’s not what it means in rap music at all. It just means shopping/ buying new clothes. If you’re regularly popping tags it implies you’ve got money to be shopping all the time, so you’re doing quite well for yourself. In that song, the singer is using the phrase ironically, because she brags about popping tags at a freaking thrift store?
“BUT URBAN DICTIONARY SAYS IT’S STEALING!”
It was about that time I had to educate these 40 somethings about how Urban Dictionary works and that they need to look at the up AND down votes to determine whether something is actually an accepted definition. UD says a lot of stupid things.
We actually discussed “pop some tags” this morning. My gut feeling: it means “show off some designer labels”, as in buying and wearing new clothes.
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’ve never heard “da,” but “za” isn’t too newfangled. I mean, it’s even been an acceptable Scrabble word since the mid 00s. It dates back to the late 60s, I believe it was West Coast slang, but don’t quote me on that.
It is kind of interesting to see how slang comes in and out of fashion. I remember in the mid-90s, at least among my peer group, some jazz slang coming back into style, so phrases like “hep” and “he’s a cool cat” and things like that, which I don’t recall ever hearing unironically in the 80s, were fine to use. (Although there has been a lot of jazz slang that never really went out of style.)
Most of the slang examples I see in this thread don’t seem cutting edge to me, but I wonder if that has to do with the internet (as postulated above) and the consolidation of culture (or whatever you want to call that.) Then again, I had never heard “ratchet” in my life, but that’s apparently an old term, too.
I’ve skimmed through the thread but I’ll try and offer all the teenage insight I can.
So theres two distinct ideas about a lot of phrases and slang that everything thinks but no one really says. The first is that there’s a big divide from black culture to white culture and, eventually, the words or slang from black culture gets passed down to white people, eventually. This of it like this except basically replace it with:
Black male teens/middle schoolers -> black female teens/middle schoolers -> white male teens -> white female teens -> middle school white kids -> all adults -> news organizations trying to be hip.
The second idea is that most things are said in an almost tongue in cheek fashion. We realize that we’re using slang words and just being ridiculous most of the time. You only get true sincerity when it either comes from the very top, like Baltimore black youth actually using street terms, or at the very bottom, like 12 year old white girls sayings “hashtag totes!”
That said, as far as the “newer” terms go:
Hella - Still being used, surprisingly. Just means “a lot”. “That move was hella tight, man.”
Swag - Orginally from the Scottish slang word “swagger” which was a description of the way some Scots walk (in a swaying motion), the word was then misinterpreted by the English as “the way someone presents themselves”. Eg, whether someone looks cool. The word quickly made its way to the states and has ever since become the catchphrase of douchebags and tools everywhere. Everyone still uses it secretly because, sometimes, its just the easiest word to use. Its a word that’s almost entirely defined by itself.
Jank - First time I actually heard it was on the TV show iCarly. Maybe everyone learned it from there. I don’t know. Means “totally effed up.” We got a test on Monday? Thats jank as shit, yo.
Ratchet - Pretty much the same the jank, but it means more crazy…like Girl, you best git outta ma face rite now or imma get ratchet on you!!!
Imma - “I’m going to.”
Troo! - “What you just said was, in fact, true.”
Ones that haven’t reached white culture yet:
Church - Absolutely right or amazing. Like its law or Biblical. I love me some of that A$AP Rocky. That shit’s church, yo.
Pause - Like when someone is talking and they just drop something big in the middle of the sentance and keep talking. So you gotta tell em to pause to clear everything up.
“So I went with Shaneesha to da clinic to get her ultra sound…”
“Yo, pause…Shaneesha got knocked up again?”
“Yea, haven’t you heard?”
I am a white youth who regularly hangs out with both black people on the cutting edge of rap and the honkiest white people ever. You guys can ask me anything and I’ll try my best to answer or give you a definition. I probably forgot a lot of words off here seeing that its hard to remember all the words you use in regular speech.
I think the ‘pause’ is usually used differently in the culture I’m familiar with. It usually is something people say when they think they have said something ‘gay’. I’m getting old though, so it may have evolved into the way you’ve used it without me noticing. The way you used it seems like normal usage though, and not really slang.
I just noticed that if I break down the slang I used in daily life I would guess 50 percent comes from just street usage…the people I know, and how we’ve always talked…30 percent directly from hip hop (meaning I heard the term there before the street…) 10 percent internet and (memes and such) and 10 percent my gay and drag queen friends. Black gay men have some of the BEST slang ever.
ETA: If it is possible to nitpick a slang term, I think I would pick on your usage of ‘church’, too. I agree that it means ‘absolutely right’, or “that’s a fact!” but I have not heard it used in the way you used in your example…that something is just awesome.
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.
Is that from that song? I swear I am still not sure if it is a parody song or not.
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, sounds like “hold up/on” or “wait (up)” would be used in conversation. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard “pause” as mentioned in the original example, and it never pinged my slang-dar.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
Is that from that song? I swear I am still not sure if it is a parody song or not.
[/QUOTE]
If your are talking about “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore, I don’t think it’s parody. I think he straight up says, “Spending too much money for labels is a swindle.”.
It’s a great song. I mean, lyrically, it is a great song. The message may be a bit…patronizing.
ETA: Right, pulykamell. Whereas, if a man tells another man, “You are always giving me a hard time…pause…” that would be another slangy way of saying, “no homo”.
Yeah, I haven’t heard that very often, but it’s similar in idea to “that’s what she said” type things, right? That is, that the previous comment has an unintended sexual double entendre (or in the case of “pause,” homosexual) in it? ETA: Or rather, the negation of such an double meaning. “No homo” doesn’t mean anything to me here.
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.
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.
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.
And if looking like a clueless old fart is now hip and post-ironic and fashionable, I need to know these things so I can tell my daughter not to throw away my house slippers.
Regards,
Shodan
