During a visit to Lee High School in Huntstville, Alabama, we collected a treasure trove of slang, including a term that seems to be particular to the Huntsville area: forf, which as a verb means to fail to follow through on commitments, and as a noun denotes the kind of person who does that, or in other words, a flake. Thanks to our friends at WLRH in Huntsville for inviting us. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Huntsville Teen Slang”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett.
We recently spent a couple really nice days in Huntsville, Alabama, and one of the things that happened there was that Martha and I went to Lee High School. Some amazing kids and teachers, just real education happening there, and it’s always nice to hang around with that kind of big energy in one room.
But one of the things that we asked the kids, what’s your slang? What are the words that you use that you don’t think we’ll know because we’re old people and not from here? And you know what? They gave us 610 submissions. 610. So this is about 100 kids. It was fantastic. I’m still going through the cards.
But one of the slang words that the kids at Lee High School in Huntsville, Alabama, put on there more than any other word is the word forf, F-O-R-F. And do you remember what that means? I do. It refers to a person who doesn’t do what he says he’s going to do. Yeah, yeah. A flake is often how it is. They often described it to me when we were chatting. They said it was a person who said they would go to a party but didn’t or that they would come somewhere with you and didn’t go. Or a liar, just to plain out someone who tells falsehoods.
Sometimes you see it as a verb. Sometimes you see it as a noun. A forf is a flake. To forf is to flake or to lie or to not execute your plans. Not come through.
One of the cool things about this word forf, F-O-R-F, is that it seems localized to Huntsville, maybe in the surrounding communities. But I cannot find concrete evidence that the word exists anywhere else in Alabama or the American South or anywhere in the United States in this particular form. It’s great. Even the few mentions on Urban Dictionary, most of them mention Huntsville if they have any kind of location information at all.
So it dates to about 2009. And one theory is that FORF, F-O-R-F, is a shortening of forfeit and perhaps comes from sports where to forfeit is like the worst kind of defeat because you didn’t even get a chance to try yourself completely on the field, right? Another theory that one of the kids shared was that it means somebody who goes back and forth on their opinions or back and forth on what they say they want to do. So Forth is a version of Forth. And in fact, I did see one person on Twitter who wrote it as Forth, F-O-R-T-H.
In any case, cool slang coming out of Huntsville. I loved it. Thank you to the teachers and staff and students of Lee High School. We had a wonderful time there. And thanks to WLRH in Huntsville for inviting us.
We’d love to hear about the slang in your area. So give us a call, 877-929-9673. Or you can send it to us in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org or find us on Twitter. We’re at Wayword.
