50 Fun Facts About Slang

"OK" first appeared in print in 1839 as a jokey abbreviation of what?

The Boston Morning Post was riding a fad for comic misspellings; Martin Van Buren's "Old Kinderhook" campaign spread it nationwide the next year.

Which US president's 1840 campaign nickname helped make "OK" a national word?

His supporters said OK stood for Old Kinderhook, after his New York hometown; the word is now described as the most spoken on the planet.

When "dude" first appeared in print in 1883, what did it mean?

Cowboys used it to sneer at city slickers, which is why a dude ranch is a ranch for tourists.

The modern slang sense of "cool" is credited to which jazz saxophonist?

The word travelled from African-American Vernacular English into jazz circles in the 1940s and never left.

"Bling bling" entered mainstream English after a 1999 single by which New Orleans rapper?

The Cash Money track put the word in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary by 2002 and Merriam-Webster by 2006.

Which New York landmark is the most popular explanation for the 1906 fad phrase '23 skidoo'?

Wind around the 23rd Street tower lifted skirts, and police supposedly told gawking men to skidoo.

"The bee's knees" and "the cat's meow" were expressions of approval from which decade's slang?

The flappers who used them also called an engagement ring a "handcuff" and said "I have to see a man about a dog" when buying whiskey.

"Groovy" comes from which world before hippies got hold of it?

It described a tune's feel in 1920s jazz culture; its earliest recorded slang use is a 1941 episode of Fibber McGee and Molly.

Who sang the 'gag me with a spoon' phrases on Frank Zappa's 1982 'Valley Girl'?

Valspeak's uptalk and "like" as a filler are now studied by linguists; Clueless cemented the stereotype in 1995.

In Cockney rhyming slang, what are a person's "plates of meat"?

The rhyme is usually dropped in practice, so a Cockney climbs "the apples" (apples and pears, stairs).

"Use your ___" means use your head; the blank comes from rhyming slang for what?

Loaf of bread rhymes with head; the phrase escaped the East End and is now used by people who have never heard of rhyming slang.

What does a Cockney mean by a "Ruby Murray"?

The Northern Irish singer was huge in 1950s Britain; newer coinages include "Scooby" (Scooby-Doo) for a clue.

Traditionally, a true Cockney is someone born within earshot of which church's bells?

The word itself comes from Middle English cokenay, a "cock's egg", once an insult for soft city folk.

Polari, the secret slang of British gay men, reached a mass audience through which 1960s BBC radio comedy?

The characters Julian and Sandy popularised "bona" and "zhoosh"; use faded after homosexuality was partly decriminalised in 1967.

Which everyday British word for something dull or tacky is thought to come from Polari?

"Camp" is another Polari escapee; "vada" (look) and "eek" (face) stayed underground.

Roughly how many diminutives like arvo, servo and brekkie exist in Australian English?

No other English dialect shortens words so enthusiastically; a bottle shop is a bottle-o and sunglasses are sunnies.

The Australian slang word "yakka", meaning hard work, was borrowed from where?

"Sheila" for a woman, by contrast, comes from the Irish name Síle.

What is a "dunny" to a Sydneysider?

It comes from the old British word dunnekin; a "bogan" is roughly the Australian answer to a redneck.

In British English "pissed" usually means what?

The American sense is annoyed; the two Englishes also disagree sharply on "fanny" and "rubber".

Ask for a "rubber" in an American office and you will most likely be understood to want what?

In Britain it is the thing on the end of a pencil, which has caused generations of confusion in classrooms.

The internet acronym LOL was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in which year?

OMG and FYI went in at the same time; the French write mdr and Thais type 555, since five is pronounced "ha".

The earliest known use of "OMG" is in a 1917 letter to which politician?

Admiral John Fisher wrote it to Churchill, decades before anyone owned a modem.

Which rapper's 2011 song "The Motto" turned YOLO into a global catchphrase?

A Grateful Dead drummer had already named his ranch YOLO, and Drake later tried, without a trademark, to collect royalties.

The acronym FOMO was popularised by a 2004 article in the student magazine of which institution?

Patrick McGinnis's piece also coined FOBO, fear of better options; the antidote JOMO came later from blogger Anil Dash.

The -ie ending of "selfie", first used in a 2002 forum, is typical of which country's English?

The -ie ending is classic Australian; Oxford made it Word of the Year in 2013.

Oxford's 2015 Word of the Year was not a word at all. What was it?

The word emoji itself is Japanese for picture-character and has nothing to do with "emotion".

The Japanese word "emoji" literally combines "e" and "moji", meaning what?

Shigetaka Kurita drew the first 176 of them in 1999 for the NTT DoCoMo i-mode service.

Who proposed the sideways smiley :-) on a Carnegie Mellon bulletin board in September 1982?

He suggested :-( at the same time, to mark posts that were not jokes.

"Rizz", Oxford's Word of the Year for 2023, is a shortening of which word?

Streamer Kai Cenat popularised it in 2021 and later complained TikTok had butchered the meaning; Tom Holland admitting "limited rizz" sealed it.

Which streamer is credited with popularising "rizz" in 2021?

Variants followed fast: the Rizzler, the Rizz God, and "unspoken rizz" for charming someone without a word.

"Cheugy", the Gen Z put-down for millennial taste, was coined in 2013 by a teenager in which city?

Gaby Rasson's Beverly Hills High School coinage sat unused until a 2021 TikTok and a New York Times piece; Live Laugh Love signs are the classic example.

The Gen Alpha word "skibidi" comes from a YouTube series about what?

Alexey Gerasimov's Skibidi Toilet, made in Valve's Source Filmmaker, racked up 65 billion views in its first year and got a Michael Bay film deal.

What was Oxford's Word of the Year for 2024?

Collins picked "brat", Dictionary.com "demure" and Merriam-Webster "polarization" the same year.

Which word did Oxford choose for 2022, describing a period of shameless self-indulgent slobbing?

It was the first Oxford choice put to a public vote; Collins went with permacrisis and Merriam-Webster with gaslighting.

What did the American Dialect Society name its Word of the Decade for the 2010s?

The 2000s went to "google" and the 1990s to "web".

What was the American Dialect Society's 2023 Word of the Year, coined by Cory Doctorow for platforms getting worse?

Cambridge chose "hallucinate" in its AI sense and Merriam-Webster chose "authentic" that year.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2020 was, unsurprisingly, what?

Australia's Macquarie Dictionary went with doomscrolling, and Oxford declined to pick a single word at all.

The word "slang" itself is first recorded in 1756. What did it originally describe?

Its origin is unknown; one theory ties it to "sling", language that is thrown.

The Marine slogan "gung ho" was borrowed from a Chinese term for what?

Evans Carlson's Raiders adopted gōnghé as "work together" in 1942; Americans then bent it to mean overkeen.

The military acronym SNAFU dates from which conflict?

Its cousin FUBAR turned into "foobar" when returning GIs enrolled at MIT and it slipped into programming.

The Thai equivalent of typing "hahaha" online is what?

The number five is pronounced "ha" in Thai; Spanish speakers type jajaja and the French mdr.

"Yankee Doodle" may be the source of which modern slang word?

The suggestion is that dude is clipped from doodle; the King of the Dudes in 1880s New York was socialite Evander Berry Wall.

Which jazz bandleader published a 'Hepster's Dictionary' of Harlem jive in 1938?

It was the first dictionary by an African-American and became the New York Public Library's official jive reference.

Which French slang is formed by flipping the order of a word's syllables?

Its own name is an example, made by inverting 'l'envers', meaning back-to-front; it was first recorded among 19th-century robbers.

Which hacker collective is credited with coining the term 'leet', as in 1337?

The word comes from 'elite', the status that unlocked special file folders and chat rooms on 1980s bulletin boards.

Euphemisms such as 'unalive', used to dodge automated online moderation, are known as what?

The word blends 'algorithm' and 'speak' and serves the same filter-evading purpose leet once did.

The rhyming slang 'on one's Tod', meaning alone, commemorates a famous what?

Tod Sloan rhymes with 'own'; the phrase is one of the few rhyming-slang adjectives rather than nouns.

The Australian word 'pommy' for an English person is thought to come from which fruit?

It works as a pararhyme of 'immigrant', a local twist on the rhyming-slang habit.

Whose 1859 Dictionary of Modern Slang held the first known glossary of rhyming slang?

He dated the form to the 1840s and the 'chaunters' and 'patterers' of London's Seven Dials.

Eric Partridge reckoned a slang term circulates for how long before it is first written down?

Partridge is cited as the first to study slang systematically; etymologies are hard because slang lives in speech.