Things have been cool a lot longer than they’ve were ever groovy. Do you think cool is headed the way of keen any day soon, or will it continue to rock the free world for the forseeable future?
More importantly, when will the word “lame” be cool? 
It transcends transient slang. It has a clear, specific meaning (even if there can be plenty of disagreement about what is worthy of the word), and there’s isn’t really anything better to replace it with.
Language is fluid, though, and none of it lasts forever, but I’d guess that it has a good 50-100 years left in it.
[Mod mod]Changed “world” to “word” in title[/Mod mod]
Ugh, “groovy” was never cool.
Maybe when jeans go out of style. People have been wearing them in the name of fashion for how many decades now? It’s amazing.
Hopefully, it will be joined in the lame enclosure by “sucks” and “dude” on the same day.
Yeah, did anybody actually use that word? I remember they used it a lot on TV trying to sound trendy IE The Brady Bunch, Groovie Goolies etc. but I don’t remember real people using the term.
One of Paul Simon’s few missteps as a songwriter was “The 59th Street Song [Feeling Groovy].” Damn shame, it’s a great tune, but … damn, no, not groovy.
The minute the media picks up the slang, it ain’t cool no more.
What’s funny to me is that “cool” sounds lame when anyone a generation older than you uses it, as if they are trying too hard–I think it’s lame when my mom says it, and my students think it’s lame when I say it–but we all grew up saying it.
Nowadays the kids are using ‘straight’ instead of ‘ok’. I felt sick one day and my homeboy came up and asked “are you straight?” and I was like “WTF?”.
True story.
I hope never, because I use it when most people around me would use “awesome.” I hate “awesome.”
Stop saying “awesome,” please.
What’s even funnier to me is I *feel *lame when I say it to people a generation younger than me. I *feel *like I’m trying too hard. Yet I don’t feel at all lame if I say it to an age mate. Weird.
It’s easier to pull off “cool” by using it as a response - no matter how old you are.
“Yeah, we’ve got five of those left in stock.”
“Cool.”
I can easily imagine it being lame when a geezer tries to use it as an adjective in a sentence, like, “These new jeans are cool.” Often times they’ll put too much emphasis on the word cool in a given sentence. Instead, it’s a lot more cool to say “cool” as disaffected and unenthusiastic as possible.
I think cool is here to stay, and I’m cool with that. I think drastic_quench is right- there is a geezery way to say cool, but I’ve heard people my mom’s age (60s) say it without it sounding weird at all.
I’d wager that if one took note of all the cools one heard in a week, it would be peppered throughout most demographics and situations. If I were to do that, I don’t think I’d even catch all the cools, it’s just so natural sounding to me. It would be like trying to catch all the instances of “stuff”, or even the affirmative use of “sure”.
I still kind of miss “tight,” which means “cool” and was popular about 10 years ago.
Dude, it’s Generation Txt now. Yer homie asked, “r u str8?” It doesn’t matter if he was speaking to you face to face or not.
homeboy?
Back in the mid-60s, my sister was fond of the word “marvy”. “Cool” is so much cooler than “marvy”. My dad was fond of “hot dog!” as an expression. As in, “Hot dog! That quarterback threw a great pass!”
I will never give up that awesome word.
And I will single-handedly bring groovy back from the grave, because it’s far out.