College Slang Collection

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

You might think of slang as a flash in the pan, words that are here today and completely outdated tomorrow. Sometimes, though, slang surprises you.

Take the word cool. Would you believe that people were using the word cool to mean good or excellent all the way back in the 1930s? It’s not so new. And if you think about it, what’s even more surprising is that right now a whole new generation of kids use this slang word in pretty much the same way that it’s been used for 75 years.

You’ll find that and much more in a new collection of campus slang gathered in the past year and edited by UCLA linguistics professor Pamela Monroe. Grant, you’ve seen this, of course.

Yeah, this is the sixth edition of the book. It’s been published irregularly since 1991. And the great thing about this is it’s a perfect snapshot of youth language. It’s, well, one of the few places you can go to to get a pretty good summary of what the college kids are saying.

And while some of this language is, of course, particular to the UCLA campus, a lot of it is universal. And as you were saying, it’s older than you think. For example, they still use mooch in a slangy way, and that goes back 150 years old.

Yeah. And newer stuff like Hader and Hela, stuff that has 10 or 15 years under its belt. I mean, these kids are using slang that was coined before they were born. And that’s interesting, right? Because we think of slang as being a passing thing.

Dimebag. They still use dimebag to mean a $10 bag of marijuana, although I imagine they’re getting less for their $10 than they used to get. Yeah, well, there is a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the collection of slang there.

Well, of course, and it’s not just because they’re college students. It’s because they’re human, right? These are things that interest us as humans. There are a few that are new to me that I thought worth pointing out.

I’ve never heard Beezy, B-E-E-Z-Y, to refer to a woman, though its history goes back through numerous editions of this book. And tender or tinderony, meaning a nice-looking person, is another one that’s new to me.

Tinderony. Yeah, a tender is somebody who’s appealing. It dates back to at least 1991. Really interesting stuff here. I should say that this book, when you talk about it, it sounds like some big, august publication, but it’s a petite publication.

It’s very academic in the front matter and kind of informal in its production. For me as a lexicographer, somebody who studies slang and new words, this is valuable because I can put this on my shelf, and I know that I’ve got a pretty accurate representation of how people spoke in the late 2000s.

Yeah, well, I think it’s good for your nightstand, too, as well. I mean, it’s a lot of fun. It’s pretty cool. And we’re going to tell you how to get a copy of the book.

Just go to our website. That’s waywordradio.org. And if you want to talk about slang or dictionaries or grammar, regional dialects, weird family sayings, you can always call 1-877-929-9673. That number again is 1-877-WAY-WORD.