Bet Bet Bet

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anna Jo from Bellingham, Washington.

Well, my roommates are just a little bit younger than me, but it’s the kind of younger where they know all kinds of words and all kinds of songs that I don’t.

And sometimes they think this is so, so funny that they won’t tell me what they mean by words.

And there’s one that’s been driving me crazy lately because it seems to mean opposites.

They’ve been saying bet to about everything. B-E-T, bet. B-E-T, like what you do at the blackjack table.

Okay, so in what context would they say this? Can you give us an example?

It seems to mostly mean I believe you and I don’t believe you.

I say I’m going to see if I can finish the whole album today. They say bet, and they never say it quiet. It’s always pushed a little bit.

Oh, okay.

And do they say it like a question? Are you raising your voice at the end of that bet? Is it like that?

You know, it does have that tone scoop, but I think it’s more of a challenge than a question.

Oh.

Oh.

That’s just how it feels.

It really has something of a vogue in the last five to ten years.

But you know about bet used this way. Sometimes it’s just a single word. Sometimes it’s duplicated or even triplicated as bet, bet or bet, bet, bet.

And often it is used to mean sure or yes, okay, good, cool.

And it’s used in exactly that way. It’s kind of an affirmative statement after somebody else says something.

But it’s at least 30 years old.

So these young folks who are gatekeeping you are using old people slang.

And you can tell them I said that.

I will. I will.

It probably started among African-American youth about 30 years ago or more.

And it quickly spread to African-American college students, to all college students.

And it’s had a gradual rise ever since.

And it’s really stayed kind of under the surface again into the last five or ten years when it just kind of exploded.

And it’s probably simply a shortening of you bet, which is a lot older.

And it’s very American slang.

You’re just not really going to find this in much of the rest of the English-speaking world, this particular use of bet in this way.

Yeah, so my sense would be that you would say, do you want to go get a coffee?

And I say bet, meaning, yes, I really want to go.

But it sounds like your roommates are using it in a sarcastic way.

Yeah.

Or challenging you a little bit.

It feels like the person saying bet isn’t really exerting effort anywhere else.

They’re just sitting in their nice chair saying bet watching me do my thing.

Yeah, they’re just rolling it.

It’s going to be so played out so fast.

So that’s the problem when you use slang too much.

It just dies a quick death.

So just know that this fad will pass quickly and you just won’t have to put up with it.

It’ll be something new and annoying after this.

Finally, some good news.

Yeah.

Anna, I hope this helped somewhat.

But you just tell them that that is 30-year-old slang.

The linguist and lexicographer Connie Ebley recorded Bette used this way among her college students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1991.

Really?

That just means that she recorded it there.

So it’s certainly older than that.

So great to talk to you both.

Great talking to you, too.

Bye-bye.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

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