Slay. Demure. Period. Eat up. Bussin’. Cap. Cringe.
Words like these are described by Adrián Rodríguez-Riccelli, professor in the Romance Languages and Literatures Department, as jargon vocabulary that comes from culture — also known as slang.
Drawings from the Roman Empire show older generations criticizing how young people spoke, he said. During the 1920s, people said “bump off” as slang for murdering someone, and “cash” meant a kiss. Now, words like “slay” mean to impress someone.
“You would have to assume that all human languages have always had something like slang,” Rodríguez-Riccelli said.
Slang is typically created by young people and thrives in environments like UB.
“A lot of slang that exists today was created three or four generations ago when it started becoming much more common for young people to spend their time around other people the same age,” linguistics professor David Fertig said. “With the rise of everyone going to high school and college, that’s when we got this phenomenon of slang as we know it.”
Rodríguez-Riccelli and Fertig describe slang as a way of bringing communities together, and as a way for young people to set themselves apart from older generations — or for any group of people to set themselves apart from others.
A lot of slang originated in certain communities, such as the LGBTQ+ community and the Black community, and was then appropriated by the wider culture. For example, “slay,” as it’s used in its current context, originated in the ballroom scene, which was dominated by Black and brown trans and queer people. The word has since become popular with Gen Z and social media users.
“I know that a lot of slang comes from AAVE [African American Vernacular English], and for better or worse evolved into TikTok slang,” Theresa Banks, senior theater technology major, said. “Sometimes I think, ‘Should you really be saying that?’ and other [times] I get it because it’s cute.”
She continued to explain that she was upset when words like “gyatt” and “griddy” became popular because the meaning of these slang terms became lost in the media. Gyatt originally developed within the Black community as a slang word for “goddamn,” but is now being used to describe someone’s large behind.
Appropriated slang words often lose their original meaning, which amounts to a loss of authenticity, Rodríguez-Riccelli explained.
Social media has allowed slang to spread quickly and rapidly. Spoken slang and slang originating through social media go through the same cycle. A niche group creates a word, then it spreads to other social groups.
“Slang was almost exclusively spoken until recently,” Fertig said. “With texting and social media, you get a lot of slang used in writing.”
Sarah Owusu is the senior features editor and can be reached at sarah.owusu@ubspectrum.com
Sarah Owusu is an assistant news editor at The Spectrum. In her free time she enjoys reading, baking, music and talking politics (yes, shockingly). She'll also be her own hairdresser when she needs a change.
