Is that snazzy new car adorbs or bobo? Grant talks about adorbs, bobo, and a few other slang terms collected by Professor Connie Eble of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Adorbs vs. Bobo”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett. I’m looking here, Martha, at a list of campus slang from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Connie Ebley, who is an English professor there and a colleague of mine, has studied slang for decades, and she collects slang from her students.
And this stuff is great. There’s no better way to get right to the heart of what is currently being used among young people than to do this.
She just asked them to put it down on paper. And there’s some really interesting stuff here.
I think one thing worth pointing out is the abbreviations that they’re using.
And maybe you’ve heard some of these, like whatevs instead of whatever.
But there’s more than that.
For example, adorbs instead of adorable or ox instead of awkward.
You know, somebody says the wrong thing at the wrong time, you’re like, oh, ox.
I like that.
Or inappropriate instead of inappropriate.
Anyway, it’s just really fun to read this stuff and find out what is happening.
Of course, a lot of this stuff has to do with sex and alcohol.
Some of it has to do with relationships.
Some of it has to do with schoolwork.
Just the usual things that concern college students, right?
Right.
And then there are two other words besides that, I guess, huh?
No, there’s a few like this.
Listen to this.
I’d never heard this before.
I don’t know how much residence it’s going to have, but Bobo apparently means of low quality or workmanship.
That bicycle is Bobo.
Bobo.
It’s junk.
What in the world?
I don’t know.
If you’ve heard of that, let me know.
Email me at words@waywordradio.org.
I want to know if you’ve used that word amongst your peer group, Bobo to mean low-quality workmanship.
In any case, this is fun stuff.
Unfortunately, it’s not something I can share online.
But maybe we’ll put a few terms up and go from there.
Cool.
Well, if you have a story about a weird word you’ve heard, tell us.
That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.
Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
