Not exactly my favorite slang of all time, but I deliberately use “swank” and “boss” quite a bit.
“That laptop is boss!”
“Swank car!”
I was a west coast kid in the 60s. A lot of life was boss, tough, swank, cherry, or keen.
“Boss” was in heavy rotation when I was a kid…then I got my first job. Bosses are L7 to the max, dig?
Calling people “man”. Hey, man.
My misread the question initially as “slang term for any time in history”. My reconsidered, more on-topic reply would be two terms from Swinging London: fab and gear.
The roaring 20’s
Mine is “Nifty”.
I guess it must be my favorite because I say it all the time: “Coo”. Not ‘cool’. Coo. That, and “dude”.
Back in the day I was always using “man”. “Hey Man!” was how I often addressed my brother, who was a Cheech and Chong fan. He still calls me “Pedro” to this day. IYKYK!
Reet, daddio.
23 Skidoo, Daddy-O! Don’t grime sketchy or it’ll queer all the Clydes and Kellys on the Old Main Drag.
My Favorite is Groovy.
From the Beatles era: was that gear or grotty?
Yeah, I like Dude also, and we forget that Okay was originally a slang term
For a while a common slang was ‘That’s bad’ meaning it’s great. My 65year old mother tried to adopt it as part of her lingo. Mom, just no. Please, just no.
She was a bookkeeper. It did not fit at all.
Otherwise, I like DaddyO from decades gone by.
Badass.
Hornswoggle; meaning to trick or deceive someone.
I have always liked the use of “deadly” by indigenous Australians to mean anything special, exciting, excellent.
Groovy was very slightly before my time.
I used to have a book of Tijuana Bibles that was a wealth of old-timey filthy slang. The one that stands out was calling a penis a “kidney disturber”.
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I like “groovy” for the times it represents but neither I, nor any other hippie I knew, ever said it…[/quote]
Same here. But 60 years later I still say “far out,” and not always ironically.
Some time in the 70’s a friend of mine started using “scooby” for “cool/neat/fabulous/etc”. It stuck and my friends and I use it to this day.
I was in Orange county during that era and when the student editor of the yearbook wanted to use “bitchin” in the text of the book the faculty advisor put her foot down. It was appealed to no avail.
It was bound in paisley, though.