Katie, a biology professor in San Diego, California, reports that her students use low-key in ways she’s not used to hearing, as in I was low-key lost in class today, meaning “I was sort of lost in class today.” Linguists Pamela Monroe at the University of California Los Angeles and Connie Eble of the University of North Carolina and their students report the use of low-key as a modifier to mean “kind of” or “with slight inclination.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Low-Key Slang”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name’s Katie and I’m a college professor calling from San Diego.
Well, welcome, Katie.
Hi, Katie. What’s up?
Hi. So as a college professor, I get a little bit more exposure than I would for someone my age to what the kids are saying these days.
And I’ve noticed I’m using the phrase low-key in kind of an unusual way.
So I had always thought of low-key as kind of an adjective, like you might describe a party as low-key or a laid-back person as low-key.
But the students now seem to be using it more like an adverb.
So like, I’m low-key crushing on that guy from my statistics class.
Or I was low-key lost in lecture today.
And I’ve just kind of been wondering, you know, when did people start using it this way?
And does it mean like secret, like it’s something they’re kind of embarrassed to admit, or does it still retain any of that like mildness?
Like is low-key bombing a test worse than or better than totally bombing a test?
So I’ve just been wondering about that.
Oh, fantastic. This is good. So you’re very observant. I like that.
How long do you think you’ve been hearing this from your students?
Probably actually just starting this year at the beginning of the fall is when I first started noticing it, although I suppose it could have been around for longer.
It has been. I can find examples of it on Twitter back to 2008, if you can believe that.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, but you’ve described low-keen exactly the way it’s being used, and you even hinted at one of the other ways it’s being used, and I’ll talk about that in a second, that’s a little less common.
So there are two different collections of college slang, one from UCLA by Pamela Monroe and her students,
and one from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill from Connie Ebley and her students.
And they both have recorded multiple instances of low-key being used more or less like you describe it.
The UCLA collection has low-key, and they gloss it, meaning they just kind of basically define it as kind of,
He was low-key hitting on me, or I was low-key mad at her, or she low-key looks like Angelina Jolie.
Those are the examples they give.
And then the Chapel Hill collection from Connie Ebley and her students start recording it in their collections in 2013,
And they define it as with diminished feeling or intensity.
Low-key, her haircut looks like a hamster stuck in a blow dryer.
So they use it there kind of as a sentence tag to put a hedge on something that’s really negative.
To kind of diminish the negative effect of something that you have said or that you’re about to say.
Another example is, I low-key want to go to a cookout.
I mean, I kind of want to go. I have a slight inclination to go to a cookout.
Yeah, my 20-year-old stepson uses low-key in a way that’s different from how I’m used to hearing it.
And I’ve also heard from my younger improv buddies, Allison, and I asked her about this.
And she said that to her, low-key means you’re interested in something, but you didn’t really expect to be drawn to it or you’re interested in something, but not really enthusiastic enough to actively pursue it.
Like I’ve been low-key looking at Crocs.
They look kind of cool.
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
So you’re right, Katie, when you say that it’s an adverb, and it modifies either an adjective or a verb in a way that it really plays off the normal meaning of low-key, which is not elaborate or showy or it’s muted or restrained.
And the original low-key comes from photography.
It’s about the way that you develop or present a photograph as muted or kind of a moody look to it.
A low-key photograph has kind of an almost noir-ish, kind of a dusk or early morning look to it.
Wow, that’s really cool.
I didn’t know that’s where it came from, and I didn’t realize how much nuance there was to it.
Very cool. Thanks so much.
I’d love it if you would be our field reporter and report back to us some other things that you learned from your students.
Please bring back more the farther we get away from college.
Yeah.
When I was in my 30s, I felt like I could fake it.
Now that I’m in my 50s, I just don’t feel like I can fake it.
Well, I’ll keep an ear out.
Thank you so much.
Take care.
Be well.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Well, we talk about slang and word histories and grammar and all kinds of things on this show, and we’d love to talk with you.
You can do that by calling us 877-929-9673 or send us an email.
That address is words@waywordradio.org.
