Slang Ratchet

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

A friend of mine was telling me about a rough patch in her life recently. She was having a hard time at work. She was overextended there and trying to balance that with her family life. And I said, it sounds like you’ve been riding the struggle bus.

Struggle bus. She’d never heard the expression, but it made perfect sense to her. And I just love this expression, riding the struggle bus. You know, it’s a great way to solicit sympathy about what’s going on with you, but also sort of make light about it at the same time. It’s a series of things not going well.

Yeah, yeah, you’re riding the struggle bus. Or if you’re having a really bad day, you’re driving the struggle bus. You’re in charge of the struggle. And if you’re having a really, really bad week, you’re driving a double-decker struggle bus.

Yeah. I’ve heard the clue bus before. You better get a ticket for the clue bus. Get hit by a clue by four, too. Oh, I hadn’t heard that. But struggle bus, it was a new-to-me term. I hadn’t read it until I came across it on a list of new slang.

Well, that list of new slang comes to us from Connie Ebley. She is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And for years now, she and her students have been compiling lists of slang from their campus. Some of the list doesn’t change much year to year. The preoccupations of college kids kind of stay the same. But every year, there’s a number of new terms on there where we’re like, oh.

And one that’s kind of come to the fore in the last couple of years is the term ratchet. It’s got a couple of different meanings. Generally, it’s derogatory. So I’m not dating her. That’s a ratchet chick. It means that she’s just not up to your standards. But you could also use ratchet to mean off the hook or great. That party was so ratchet last night, I can’t even believe it. Or ratchet kind of means hot mess. That is a ratchet situation, not even getting a part of that lab. That’s just messed up. That’s going to put me on the struggle bus.

Yeah, put me on the struggle bus. So it’s a cool list. And thanks to Connie Ebley for sending that. We really appreciate it and her students. It’s a ton of great stuff. We’ll try to share a few more later in the show.

Great. And if you’d like to talk about any aspect of language, slang, grammar, call us 877-929-9673. Or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.