I
was watching a talk show on TV the other day and it made me realize just how
far behind I am in keeping up with all of the new terms and expressions in the
English language. You see, even though
the guests on the show, a group of teenagers, were speaking English (at least I
think they were), I barely understood a word they said.
One
girl, for example, was angrily discussing her recent breakup with her
boyfriend. “He used to be so nice,
telling me all the time what a bomb I
was, how bad I was and how fat I was, so why then, did he cheat on me with my
best friend?”
I
just sat there, staring at the TV because the girl made no sense to me. I mean,
she actually liked it when her boyfriend called her a fat, bad bomb? He
sounded like a real creep to me. Still,
out of curiosity, I decided to check out the words online.
I
was surprised to learn that nowadays, “bad” actually means good. And a bomb is something that’s flashy and
exciting – really “dynamite” (I’ll bet a lot of Broadway stars whose plays were
called box-office bombs are wishing the latest definition had applied to them
instead). I also discovered that the
word isn’t “fat,” but “PHAT,” which stands for “pretty hot and tempting” (Oh
great – now when people tell me I look fat (phat?), I’ll have to ask them to spell it before I get upset?).
Out
of curiosity, I also happened to look up modern-day terms for kissing. They included, among others, “sucking face,”
“tonsil hockey,” and “swapping saliva.”
How
romantic.
Back
when I was a teen, the popular terms for kissing were “making out” and “necking”
(I hate to even think of what they
might mean nowadays). I mean, look at
what happened to the term my mother’s generation called kissing—“mugging!” At exactly what point in time, I wonder, did
something so romantic suddenly transform into something that could get you 5-10
in prison? Can you just see some poor
old guy bragging to his grandchildren, “Yep, when I was in my prime,
I spent a lot of time mugging in the back seat of my car over at Massabesic
Lake. The ladies told me I was one of
the best around!”
Even
a lot of the words and expressions I used when I was a teenager already are
obsolete. When was the last time you
heard someone say “groovy” or “far out?”
Refer to the police as “the fuzz?” Call a house a “pad?” Describe wild colors or music as
“psychedelic, or anything pleasurable as “neat-o?” And I’m pretty sure the word “cool” is on life support right about
now, too.
If
I’m feeling behind the times, I just can imagine how my mother’s generation
feels. Back when she was young, a
really special guy was called “the cat’s pajamas” (though I have NO idea why),
and a pretty woman would elicit appreciative choruses of “hubba, hubba, zing, zing!” from men.
Even
job titles have changed over the years.
A secretary is an administrative assistant, a waitress is a food server,
a stewardess is a flight attendant, a phone solicitor is a telemarketer, and a
dog groomer is a fur-coiffure specialist (okay, so I made up that last one).
But
I learned yet another new job title when I was in a department store the other
day and asked the woman at the service desk if there might be a stock boy
available to help me lift a 35-lb. bag of dog food into my cart.
She
said, “No problem. I will page a merchandise replenisher to help you.”
What
concerns me is that if the English language continues to change at the rate it
has been, everything I’ve written in my old diaries might be grossly
misconstrued when some future generation happens to find them lying among the
ruins.
Take,
for example, the word “boob.” When I
was growing up, it was used solely to describe a foolish person—someone who
acted like a juvenile. So just imagine someone picking up my old diary and
reading, “It seemed as if every time I turned around at the party last night,
these two boobs – both husky with long hair – were staring me in the face!”
And
“dogs” were a common term for feet. In fact, an old slogan for the “Hush
Puppies” brand of shoes was, “They quiet your barking dogs.” One of my old
diary excerpts reads: “My dogs are in so much pain right now I barely can stand
on them! That’s what I get for forcing
them to walk around in spiked heels all day!”
Sounds like a pretty good case for the SPCA.
But
the worst thing I wrote in my old diaries was the expression, “fooling around.”
Back then, it meant to hang out with someone.
Just about every weekend, I wrote something like, “Tonight I fooled
around with George, his cousin Ken and their two girlfriends.” People who might
read that in the future probably will think I was a real “floozy.”
Oh,
actually they won’t...because that’s another expression that’s become obsolete.
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